On the Edge of Seventeen
by love and peace
Summary: A story about how mark and roger met. yes, i know it's been done about a gazillion trillion million times, but i thought it would be fun to give it a shot.
1. Default Chapter

On the Edge of Seventeen  
  
Notes: This story is told from the POV's of Mark and Roger, it talks about how they make friends and stuff. I know it's been done about a gazillion times before, but I just thought it would be fun to give it a shot.....  
  
Disclaimer: Most of these character's aren't mine, but I guess that goes without saying, doesn't it?  
  
One: Mark  
  
August 1, 1985  
  
The night before they let me out, Laura, Kyle and I sit on the roof over the children's wing and smoke a joint. You'd think they'd notice, wouldn't they—the Doctors—that we had drugs? For that matter, you'd think they'd notice that three of the psych patients were gone. You'd think they'd be worried that three potential suicides were perched on the roof.  
  
Basically, the suicide floor is a ward for all us failures. Everyone here failed at life, so we tried to die, but we went and fucked that up too.  
  
"Y'know," says Laura, "I'll really miss you when you're gone, Mark. Seriously. You're so nice."  
  
"You really are, though!" says Kyle, like I've been denying it for hours. Like he has to persuade me. He does, in fact. I know I'm not a nice person. If I were a nice person, I wouldn't have tried to kill myself, would I?  
  
"I'm going to miss you!" cries Laura again. She snakes her arms around my neck and hugs me hard. "Come back, okay?" suddenly she looks up, alarm written over her pretty face, "I mean don't! Don't ever come back! Write me or something, I dunno....."  
  
"What's your address?" I ask, even though I'm sure that if I do write her, I'll be sending any letters here. Laura has tried to kill herself five times, but she just can't seem to do it. She is a veteran of the locked ward by now. The cooks know her by name.  
  
"666 Loony Bin," smirks Kyle, taking a drag on the joint and passing it to me. "Send me some laxatives or something, Mark."  
  
Kyle has picked the slow way out. I didn't even know boys could be anorexic until I met Kyle.  
  
"Sure thing," I say, and stare up at the sky. When I was little, my mother said that the stars were all the wishes that no one ever bothered to make. She said that they sat there, glowing and ready for some person to speak them and pluck them out of the sky. My mother has a wish fixation. According to her, you can wish on just about anything. Yellow cars, buses, tooth paste billboards, the last car in a train, spilled barley, a whole in your sock, anything normal, but still odd enough to be sacred could have the power to grant your wish.  
  
I'm sure that if I made every wish I ever had, the sky would be much darker.  
  
I wish Laura couldn't walk these halls with her eyes shut. I wish on her scars, on the pills they give us to sleep, on her crooked front tooth.  
  
I wish Kyle could eat with out shuddering. Place my wishes on every rotten back tooth, every layer of scar tissue on his esophagus, every rib rubbing against the skin.  
  
I wish I could take them with me to Scarsdale, New York, where my family is moving. No more Pittsburgh, we're leaving it behind because my mother says she can't take any more sympathetic eyes at the Giant Eagle. My dad's sick of people at work asking how Mark's doing. My sister can't look at her friends.  
  
I wish on the last embers of the joint, on the stain on my special Western Psyche pajama pants, on the dent in my left thumb nail, that I could wrap up their pain in a ball and shove it through the cracks in the city streets. I want to take care of them, see that they make it okay in the world.  
  
"We should go back in," murmurs Laura.  
  
Kyle nodds, "about time for the nurses to change shifts. Let's go."  
  
So we creep back through the unlocked window in the game room on the pediatrics floor (when I was little I thought that pediatrician meant foot doctor. Thought pedophile was a person who loved feet). We glide so easy through the doors, up the back steps, into our ward (we're on pass, Laura and I, so we can go in and out if we're good).  
  
"Be careful, in the Big Wide World, Mark Levi Cohen." Whispers Laura, hugging me tight one last time before slipping into the common room.  
  
And I'm wishing on that sweet, smoky smell of incense clings to her straight, brown hair that one day she'll also have to be careful in the Big Wide World. And I'm wishing she'll see more than the view through the window, more than this cold linoleum and flickery tube lights. And I'm wishing to see her again in ten years, smiling and whole and fending for herself in the big scary world.  
  
Yes, okay that's the first chapter. It's been a while since I've written a story, so I'm a little rusty. Please please PLEASE review. Tell me what you think. Say if you think I should continue this or just take it down. 


	2. two

Disclaimer: Mark and Roger and any other rent persona aren't mine.  
  
Two: Roger  
  
August 13, 1985  
  
My uncle Rob kicks me off the farm in Pennsylvania two weeks before school starts.  
  
He kicked me out for setting all the dogs free, and for not feeling even a little bit bad about it. I mean, why would I feel bad about it? For the first time in two and a half months, I could breathe right.  
  
Uncle Rob owns a chicken farm, but he keeps these small, fast dogs (not sure of the breed) for two reasons. Officially, they're to scare off foxes and other things that would eat the chickens. Unofficially, they're for racing. Rob makes a lot of money (but loses more) betting on dog races down by the slag heap.  
  
Don't get me wrong, I didn't let them go on the basis of living on some moral high ground or anything. I have no moral high ground. If I have any morals at all they live in the low ground. They live in a swamp. I don't care if Rob gambles or drinks or shoots heroin or amphetamines or any of that stuff. Nor do I have anything against chickens either, in case you're wondering. I didn't let the dogs go to give the foxes a fighting chance at those idiot birds.  
  
No, I let the dogs go because of they way they were kept. See, Rob keeps his dogs in these tiny little kennels in his back yard. They're raised above the ground on four foot stilts and they're just big enough for the dogs to curl up in. They can't stand up without hunching up, they can barely turn around. They certainly can't move enough.  
  
See, from the second I saw those kennels, I felt like I couldn't quite breathe. Like someone one had stuffed up my nose and I had to do all my breathing through a straw or something. Seemed like I couldn't get those dogs out of my head. Rob made me feed 'em and clean out their kennels and stuff, and I hated it. Not because it was gross or anything, but because they were so cramped. They were trapped, held in. They were frustrated and stuck and so unhappy and I just didn't know what else to do except set them free.  
  
So one night I let them out in the yard around the chicken coop to do their thing like always, but the next morning I didn't round 'em up. The dogs weren't stupid, either, they dawdled for about five minutes before they got the picture and ran off. I felt fantastic for the rest of the morning.  
  
Unfortunately, Rob didn't. He called my dad and his wife, Sylvia, and the next morning saw me on the first bus out of Somerset County heading back to Scarsdale.  
  
A/N: thanks so much to the people who reviewed!! 


	3. three

Disclaimer: Characters not mine.  
  
Three: Mark/Roger  
  
September 1, 1985  
  
MARK  
  
I wish I could say that if feels great to be back in school after seven months away from the world. I wish I could say that I was just glad to be getting on with my life. Sadly the truth is, school just isn't that different from the psyche ward. It has the same not dim enough to be dim, not bright enough to be bright strip lights flickering in the ceiling. The walls are painted the same soothing nothing color. You still have to get a pass to go anywhere, even the bathroom. There are cameras in every room. It smells like canned air and bad food and cleaning products. Plus it's full of insane teenagers. There are only two big differences. First off, in the psyche ward we were at least honest about being nuts. Here you have to pretend to be sane. Also, they can't give you Thorazine, instead they use American History 101 as a sedative.  
  
ROGER  
  
"Check the new kid," hisses Ellis, prodding me in the ribs with his long, bony finger. I hate Ellis's fingers. They're like little dull knives, and he's always prodding someone with one.  
  
"Where?" I hiss back, purposefully spattering Ellis with spit so he'll move further away. His breath is ferocious.  
  
"The one with the t-shirt and the hair."  
  
"Gee thanks, man. 'Cause y'know that really narrows it down!"  
  
Ellis roles his eyes. I'm realizing all over again why I can't stand him. I'm also wondering all over again why exactly I hang around with him. "Right there, man!" he points one of his stupid fingers.  
  
Then I see him. And yes, Ellis was right. He is indeed wearing a shirt and he certainly has hair. In fact, he seems to have a surplus. It looks like it's trying to escape or something. It's leaning every which way, toppling over the sides of his head, standing up straight in the back, poised and waiting to jump off his head and make a break for freedom. His shirt is old and faded. It used to be black, but by now it's faded to a dark gray. The Clash is written in cracked pink letters across the front. His shoes look like they're about to fall off his feet. They're Chucks, so they've split along the instep where the rubber meets the fabric. I can see his socks.  
  
I can't really decide if I like him or not. He's got good taste in music, that's for sure, but he looks a little—I don't know, raw I guess. It's like there's nothing between him and the world. There's nothing there to keep him from bumping into things and getting bruises (metaphorically speaking). He looks like the sort of kid who needs a protector.  
  
"He's weird," I whisper, "don't you think?"  
  
"Yeah, there's something....I dunno, off," says Ellis. For a second I'm surprised that he's picked up on it. Then I realize that if Ellis, who has the mental capacity of a yam, can see this kid's vulnerability then everyone else in the entire school can too. He's in serious trouble.  
  
MARK  
  
I am in serious trouble.  
  
It takes me roughly forty minutes to see this. In this time I have had ten spit balls lobbed at me from various points in the room, I've been tripped, someone has thrown a paper ball at my head, and a particularly charming young lady has told me to "Get the fuck out of her seat".  
  
I hate high school. Not this high school, but high school in general. I also hate Sophomore year, and I predict that I will hate junior and senior years just as much.  
  
I decide to skip second period. I need a smoke badly.  
  
I choose the third floor boy's room to wait out Geometry since it's on the Freshman floor so if anyone does come in, they'll be younger and therefore someone I can feel superior to simply because I am one year older.  
  
I light up and lean back against the wall, day dream about Laura. These are—were—her smokes. Cloves. I don't know where she got them, but they're awesome. She gave them to me as a goodbye present. I can see her, still, suspended in the thick hospital light like a photograph. She's folded herself into her favorite chair in the common room, tracing the corduroy valleys with her blunt finger tips. Laura chews her nails something special. Her fingers were always raw and red, the nails gnawed down to the quick. Some days she'd chew so much that her fingers would bleed and I'd let her chew my nails instead. Kyle claimed it was cannibalism, letting her do that.  
  
The day I met her, the first thing I noticed about her were her fingers. Not her eyes, not her hair, not her boobs, her fingers. They looked blind, like stubbed out cigarettes.  
  
And suddenly, I'm looking at them again. Nails chewed down to the quick. Stubbed out, blind fingers. Laura's fingers. But no.....no, they aren't right. They're longer, the knuckles more pronounced. And they taper out at the ends, like someone took a rolling pin and pressed them flat. These are boys hands. Boys hands on the knees of faded jeans, connected to an old blue T-shirt with a boy's head sticking out the top. Longish scraggly brown hair (well brown at the roots, died blond). Strong-ish nose, flat eyebrows, wide mouth. But it's the eyes that get me. They aren't right, they almost seem crooked....not crooked.....just different colors. One blue, one green. They throw his whole face off kilter.  
  
"You gonna smoke that, or just let it burn down?" He asks, grinning at me.  
  
I glance down at the cig, surprised that it's half gone and swear silently. These are good smokes, I shouldn't waste them.  
  
I take a drag in answer.  
  
"Are those Cloves?" he asks, plopping down across from me like he's my best friend.  
  
I nod.  
  
"Can I have one?"  
  
"No fucking way."  
  
He laughs. I expected him to slug me (because he's obviously not a freshy, so he could). But no, he laughs. "Well you're not dumb. I'm Roger." He extends his blind, blunt hand.  
  
"Mark." I shake it.  
  
"You're new."  
  
"Yeah." Well someone's observant.  
  
"Where're you from?" he asks, leaning forward.  
  
"Pittsburgh." Maybe if I don't talk much he'll go away.  
  
"Oh. Like it here?" he presses.  
  
"No." I don't I don't I really don't.  
  
"Oh....me neither." Well he's not a fool.  
  
"Okay, Roger." Go away.  
  
"Okay, Mark. What's your last name?"  
  
Who cares? What's is up with you? "Cohen."  
  
"When's your birthday?"  
  
You're a big freak. "December 12."  
  
"Can I have a smoke?"  
  
Well you've got to admire his perseverance.  
  
"No."  
  
And so having had this scintillating discussion, we sit in silence and ponder it's deeper meanings.  
  
I lean my head back, wish on the flickering light that Laura was here, smelling smokysweet as sandalwood and cigs. Leaning her head on my shoulder and talking nonsence. Wishing on that crack in the bathroom mirror that I was anywhere, anywhere, anywhere but here.  
  
A/N please PLEASE review. Give me opinions/suggestions, anything! Thanks so much!! 


	4. four

See first chapter for disclaimer  
  
A/N; I've gotten some comments about how Mark seems kinda different from normal. I guess I just wanted to make him less goody-goody. Even in the play he's not a complete spaz, and he does have some fun at the party. I guess I just wanted a wilder take on him. I mean, everyone has it in them, it's just some get it out of their systems sooner than others. I guess that's what I'm trying to get across, but if you guys think it's too much, I'll try to tone it down a little.  
  
Four: Mark  
  
Halloween 1985  
  
I almost decide not to go to the party. I mean, it's not like I know anybody there. I think I only got invited because I smoke sometimes with Chris DePaul (the guy throwing it). Chris is an okay guy, only thing is he's such a burn out that I'm surprised he has the initiative to make a sandwich, let alone throw a party.  
  
In the end I go though. I want to say it's because I decide to follow Chris's example and do something slightly productive, but that would be a lie. Honestly it's either this or spend Halloween handing out candy with Cindy and I'd rather not spend tonight with my older sister.  
  
The nice thing about Scarsdale is that you can walk everywhere from anywhere because it's organized in a grid. It's like walking on a chess board. The only real problem is remembering where you are because all the blocks look the same. They've all got similar names, Owl Close, Fox Street, Rabbit Road. What is it with upstate New York and nasty little animals?  
  
Chris lives on 420 (no joke!) Doberman Way. It's no wonder the kid's a burnout with an address like that! I can feel the music before I get into the house, the baseline thumping up through my feet. Inside it's a nice typically Scarsdale house, respectable. The first floor is deserted, but for a few couples making out on various pieces of furniture. There's a sign made from the lid of a pizza box taped to the wall with PARTY IN BASEMENT written in sharpie. I clop down the stairs and suddenly and get hit with a solid wall of smoke and sound. Led Zeppelin (Immigrant Song) is roaring through the speakers. The air is gray with a combination of cigarette smoke, incense, and pot. People are everywhere. Some are dancing, but not many. Instead, most are sitting around, bobbing their heads to the music. A guy in the corner is raving about tigers in the hair dryer. Most of them are sitting around in groups talking, eating, smoking. Typical party.  
  
I join a group and someone (I think her name is Jenny) passes me a joint and I'm away in the land before I know it. Chris did good. There is an amazing amount of drugs at this party. I don't know where or how on earth he scored it, but he's obviously got connections, because some of these people look way older than fifteen.  
  
Between ten and midnight, everything is a blur. I'm well aware that I'm going way too fast. I'm drunk and high and I'm not entirely sure what I've ingested. I vaguely remember talking to Chris for a little. I danced with someone, some girl I don't know. I think I kissed her, but I'm not sure. I'm not the kissing strangers type. For that matter, I'm not the kissing anyone type. I don't think I've had this many chemicals in my blood ever. I also don't think I like this very much. It's making me nervous and sea sick, the way the room keeps tilting and going in and out of focus. I can't see straight, walk straight, think straight, my only rational thought is that I have to get out of this basement. I have to get upstairs and calm down a little. I hope there's coffee or water or something without alcohol that I can drink. I need to slow down.  
  
I struggle through the packed basement, up the stairs (were there this many of them on the way down? Where they this narrow, this steep, this dark? Why are they moving?).  
  
The basement opens into the kitchen. The tiles are a problem. They're black and white checks and the black ones keep popping up, the white ones sink down. Then they switch and the white rise and the black sink. I don't think I can walk on this floor. I stagger and grab the counter. It looks like sponge, but it holds so I guess it isn't.  
  
"Hey, are you okay?"  
  
Oh great, now the counter is talking to me. Can this night get worse?  
  
"Dude, can you hear me? Are you okay?"  
  
Fucking counter. Wait.....no, because counters can't talk so.....  
  
I look up. This tall guy with shaggy hair that's half blond, half brown is staring down at me. God he looks familiar. Wide mouth, different colored eyes....it's, wait for it, it's BATHROOM KID!  
  
"You're not the counter," I say.  
  
"No, I'm the Roger," he says. "Are you alright?"  
  
"Um.....the floor tiles.....I don't think I can stand on them. They won't hold still."  
  
"No problem, we'll go into the living room. Do you want some pudding?" He grabs my elbow and guides me into the other room, puts me down on the sofa.  
  
"No. I need to slow down......"  
  
"I'll help, just let me get my pudding. I've got the munchies like nothing else, man."  
  
So I watch Roger eat his pudding and I drink copious amounts of water and later some pop. It doesn't bring me down all the way, but it helps a little. I have to give Roger credit for most of it. He keeps bringing me stuff to drink, walking around with me, finding me places to puke. I am insanely grateful, especially after the way I treated him in the bathroom. I think now I'd give him a whole box of Cloves, if I had any left.  
  
Now, there are three things that can happen after you spend the night the way we did. A) You can ignore each other forever. Pretend this embarrassing little incident never happened. B) You can become worst enemies after the person taking care of you tells everyone at school what a loser you are. C) You can become best friends. The two musketeers. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Sid and Nancy (only without the sex and the suicide pact). But anyway, I think you know what I mean.  
  
Honestly , I'm really worried that we're going to have a B relationship. C wouldn't be so bad, but it would be a waste of a night. A seems hopeless. B seems most likely, but it would totally suck.  
  
So I'm shocked on Monday when I drag myself up the drive to the school and hear Roger calling me from across the parking lot.  
  
"Hey! Mark! C'mere, man!"  
  
And I go over. No, I drift. I drift on a cloud of shock and relief because it's not an unfriendly yell. Roger grins at me, "Had a good weekend? Did you get busted by your folks?"  
  
"No. The only one up was my sister. Let's just say I'm in debt to her till I'm forty one."  
  
"But you're not grounded." He states, still grinning.  
  
"Not yet, anyway."  
  
"That's cool, hey meet Ellis and me behind the kitchen during English, okay?"  
  
"Sure." 


	5. five

Five: Mark  
  
November 1985  
  
Later, when my mother would ask about the camera, I'd tell her it was all Roger's fault. She hated that camera, but not as much as dad. Dad had an agenda against it. Seek and destroy. He wanted that old Nikon dead. From the day I brought it home he started barking at me:  
  
"What is that thing Mark?"  
  
"A camera? It's this new fangled invention used to take pictures of people." I said. Cindy rolled her eyes at me.  
  
"Don't be a smart ass, Mark." Barked Dad. My dad always says my name after he addresses me. Shape up, Mark. Tuck in your shirt, Mark. There's a smudge on your nose, Mark. Clean your room, Mark. You're a lazy son of a bitch, Mark. You are not the son I wanted, Mark. Mark Mark Mark Mark. He sounds like a dog barking away.  
  
Mom took a kinder tact. She always treats me like I'm made of glass, especially after Western Psyche. It's like she's afraid I'm going to suddenly shatter. Suddenly the world has provided a whole slew of terrifying possibilities, all leading to my demise. Kitchen knives, laundry detergent, fishing rod, aspirin, they're all suddenly deadly. She's not just scared of boogey men anymore, she's scared of me.  
  
"Oh, it's a lovely camera, Mark." (She says my name a lot too. That was part of the reason I liked Roger, he rarely said my name.) "It's so nice that you have a hobby. Isn't it nice that he has a hobby, Harold?" She was dripping parental interest.  
  
Dad just grumbled and lumbered away.  
  
"Probably use it to take perverted pictures of the girl across the street," drawled Cindy. Cindy always drawled.  
  
"Yeah, that's what you want isn't it? Naked pictures of What's-Her-Fuck across the street so you can have your lesbian fantasies about her!" I sneered.  
  
"Mark! Language!" Tweeted Mom. I wasn't sure if she was referring to 'fuck', 'lesbian' or both.  
  
Cindy threw a fork at me. That was nothing new either, Cindy was always throwing things at me. Good thing she had such terrible aim.  
  
To tell the truth, it was mostly my family's general discomfort surrounding the Nikon that made me take up photography in the first place. The first pictures I took were terrible. Well, all but one. It was this shot of Roger with the guitar—the guitar that he would tell his parents was my fault—he was sitting on the steps outside our school, trying to restring it. It was late afternoon sun was shining through his shaggy hair, glowing like a halo, making him look like some sort of demented angel. In the soft afternoon light he became a strange kind of holy in his ripped jeans and plaid shirt.  
  
It's strange how quickly and suddenly my parents swung form loving Roger to hating him. At first they were all atwitter, bouncing around the house and cooing about my 'new little friend'. Then he came over in his shredded jeans, his combat boots with the soles that flapped like hungry mouths and his shaggy, two color hair and suddenly they didn't like him so much. I guess he was just too much like me. Shabby, suburban waste with a hangover. He didn't even remember my last name, so he called my mother "Mrs. Mark's Mom". Good alliteration, but I'm not sure my mom really appreciated it.  
  
Anyway, the whole camera/guitar fiasco started when he showed up at our house three weeks after Chris's party. Cindy answered the door;  
  
"Marky! There's a psychopath on amphetamines here to see you!" she shouted (still managing to drawl).  
  
I scanned my memory for someone who resembled a psychopath on amphetamines and came up with Roger and our neighbor's dog, Binky.  
  
"Is it a Jack Russell Terrier?" I called.  
  
"No, it's this kid!" Drawl drawl draaaaaaaaaawl.  
  
"Is that you, Roger?!"  
  
"No, it is I, Quaalude, the King of Siberia! I have arrived with my royal entourage of gold plated camels and my fifty virginal concubines! Fear me earthlings!"  
  
Definitely Roger.  
  
"I'll be right there, you're Royal Highness!" I yelled and thumped down the stairs. Cindy was standing at the bottom, looking disdainful. Next to her was Roger, leaning against the door frame with this scary manic sort of grin plastered across his face. Mom was standing in the kitchen door, looking faint.  
  
"Hi Mark! Hi Mrs. Mark's Mom! Hi.....Angry Looking Female Person!" Said Roger, cheerfully. He didn't know it, but he'd sealed his fate then and there. He was officially No Good.  
  
An extremely uncomfortable silence followed. Finally I broke it.  
  
"So Roger, why are you here?" says I.  
  
"There's this great junk sale on Fox Lane," says he. "A great junk sale?" says I.  
  
"On Fox Lane," says he.  
  
"I'll be back at five," says I to my mother dear.  
  
"I hope you get hit by a car," says my darling sister.  
  
"I hope you get the cobs and die," says I. And then we're off.  
  
"That's a really charming family, you got." Said Roger as we turned on to Lion Street.  
  
"Aren't they, though?" I smirked.  
  
"Especially your sister, she's a real peach." He kicked a rock and grinned at me from under his hair.  
  
"Oh yes. A sweeter sister you could never hope to meet." I was drowning in sarcasm. "Are we actually going to a junk sale?"  
  
"You bet we are! There's something there that I really want to show you! It's totally awesome!" There it was again. That crazy glint in his eyes. His whole body seemed suddenly charged with electricity. He sped up till I had to jog to keep pace with him.  
  
"What is it?" I gasped, clutching a stitch in my side. Man was I out of shape.  
  
"Can't tell you. Just wait and see. It's fantastic!!" He sped up even more and soon we were on Fox Lane.  
  
"There! Isn't it amazing?" He was absolutely glowing.  
  
I scanned the table cluttered with junk. There was a set of old glasses form the thirties, a pile of yellowing Time Magazines, this extremely creepy baby doll made of china, and an acoustic guitar with pock marked finish and only one string.  
  
"What am I looking at?" I asked, scanning the table incase I'd missed something.  
  
"The guitar, idiot!" he scooped it up gently, almost reverently, like it was a baby or a piece of crystal. "It's gorgeous," he breathed.  
  
I had to wonder if we were talking about the same guitar.  
  
"It only has one string, Roger."  
  
"I can get more."  
  
"It's dying!" I protested. "It needs to rest in peace."  
  
"It just needs a little love. I'm going to buy it." He ran his blunt fingers over the cracked surface.  
  
I glanced at the price tag. "Well it's only five bucks. I guess you could do worse."  
  
"Yeah," he sighed. He was in love. Moon struck. By a guitar.  
  
"How about you look around while I pay for this. Maybe you'll find something great, too." He suggested. I honestly doubted it, but then who knew? Maybe there was something to this guitar that I just wasn't seeing. Anything odd enough to be sacred......it had history and personality, that guitar. Roger was resurrecting it. He loved it already, and it was damn ugly then. He'd love it even more once he had it fixed upI knew for sure that Roger didn't wish on crooked toenails or spilled sugar or anything like that, but he did believe in things that were just a little skewed, just slightly damaged. I mean, he's friends with me, isn't he? So if he thought I'd find something here that I'd love just as much as the guitar maybe I would. It wouldn't hurt to look anyway.  
  
With that in mind I rummaged around the table, picking things up, turning them around, trying to find something—anything—that seemed special enough to save from the junk yard. I half expected to feel a shock like a low volt electrical current running up my arms when I touched the right thing, only that didn't happen. In the end, it was sheer desperation, a need to make Roger think I'd found something just as special as he had, coupled with a very mild interest that made me pick up the old Nikon black and white camera.  
  
"Found something?" asked Roger. I noticed that the guy running the sale had thrown in a case too, probably grateful that someone had actually taken the guitar.  
  
"Uh, sure. Yeah." I held up the camera.  
  
"Cool," said Roger. "You take pictures?"  
  
"As of today, sure I do."  
  
"Okay. Let's go."  
  
And that was it. The camera cost me ten bucks. It was probably worth way more than that and I wondered why it was going so cheep since it was in really good condition. Turned out it had belonged to guy's ex-wife. She was a photographer for National Geographic and she left the camera when she split. Apparently she came back a week after the junk sale to get it back. Too bad for her, I'd already bought it, and I wasn't about to give it up. Like I said, I was too busy annoying my family with it to even consider returning it. It was fantastic how angry it made Cindy and Dad.  
  
That was, of course, before I took the picture. One good picture, that was all it took to make me want to take more, better pictures. I've always been like that. Once I do something okay, I set my self a new goal. I want to do it better and better.  
  
So Roger had his guitar and I had my Nikon. We made an interesting pair, constantly fussing over them. Fiddling with this and that. And woe betide anyone who touched them without our permission. They were our babies. The first things we really loved. It was so unbelievably corny that we should both find them on the same day, at the same yard sale but sometimes life just throws flukes like that at you.  
  
Note: okay, chap five and we have not only the camera, but the guitar as well. All in one swell foop (fell swoop? O well). I know it's a tad contrived, but I wanted to get it in, and I knew that if they didn't both get them in the same chapter that it would take about ten more chapters just to get them in there. Also, I know that photography is different from film making, don't worry, he'll get a video camera eventually. So, all rejoice! Mark has something to distract him from drugs, so he can stop being such a bad little boy. 


	6. six

Sorry I didn't update sooner. Was experiencing severe writers block coupled with a bad case of CantWriteAnythingGood-eosis (rather like stickittothemaneosis only different)  
  
Six: Roger  
  
December, 1985  
  
People talk about having catalysts, about these moments of extreme realization, of blinding light and understanding. Well the guitar and the Nikon were our catalysts, I think. It was like, once we had these things to be passionate about, we didn't need drugs. I remember looking at that guitar and seeing a million possibilities, a gazillion galaxies full of chances floating in it. It could take me anywhere or nowhere but the potential was there. The drugs seemed so boring when you put them up against all those chances. Mark said they were like imaginary numbers. The rate at which the glass does not break, the car does not skid off the road, the bullet does not connect with the brain.  
  
You notice a lot more when you're sober. Some of it's good, like the bank of wild flowers growing by the super market or the way Daisy McEwan's front tooth is chipped a little or the used condom on the playground (some may argue that this isn't a good thing, but it means that somewhere, somebody got some). Unfortunately, you also notice the less pleasant things more, like dog poop, or how disgusting my step mom looks when she walks around the house bare assed (it was always gross but without any buffers it's nauseating).  
  
A case of noticing things in a big way is the party Mark and I go to for Christmas. It's at Joan Kaysen's house and nearly everyone is wasted except for Mark and me. We've stationed ourselves in these two ancient bean bag chairs by this group of freshmen girls who are all stoned as rocks and the conversation is beautiful;  
  
"Hey Maaaaaaaaary,"  
  
"Yeah Jill?"  
  
"Hey Maaaaaaaaaaary,"  
  
"Yeah Jill?"  
  
"My head feels.....light."  
  
"The room is special."  
  
"Hey......Heeeeeeeeyyy listen to this!" Jill tips forward and giggles into the carpet, "Lucy McGillicuty got liposuction! Can you believe?"  
  
"Oh my God! That's so sad but it's funny. I heard they use a vacuum."  
  
"Eeeeeeeew.....where are the chips?"  
  
"It's like the Young and the Restless, only way better," whispers Mark and crunches on the chips.  
  
"Are those their chips?" I ask, grabbing a handful.  
  
"Yeah, I took them out of Mary's hand."  
  
"Hey Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaary,"  
  
"Yeah Jill?"  
  
"Oh! Oh! It's starting!" I hiss. Mark snorts.  
  
"I heard.....wait for it! I heard. That Michael. Venalia. Killed. Himself." Jill grabs Mary's arm and looks deep into her eyes, "Promise you won't kill yourself, okay? You're my best friend, Mary!"  
  
And suddenly it's not so funny anymore. I feel Mark go stiff next to me. There's a sick, dark feeling rising in my stomach. I have no sympathy for suicides. I hate them. They're selfish and sick and so.....so thoughtless! It's like they don't care about how their actions will effect everyone else. All they think about is themselves! It's so stupid and wasteful and I hate it!  
  
"I wonder what he was feeling?" says Mark softly.  
  
"I don't know and I don't care. He was a jackass." I snap.  
  
Mark stares at me. His eyes are huge behind his glasses. "How do you mean? Did you know him?"  
  
"No I didn't know him, and you know what? I'm glad I didn't! He was a horrible, selfish, person and I hate him! I hate him just for doing what he did and leaving all these people behind. Anyone who kills themselves didn't deserve to be alive in the first place!" a couple people are staring, it's then I realize how loud I've gotten.  
  
"You don't know what you're talking about, Roger." Says Mark so quietly I can barely hear him. He's tracing the seams on the bean bag chair with his middle finger. "You can't be mad at him for being sad, can you? He probably felt like there was no.....I don't know. I can't articulate. You don't know. You just don't know."  
  
"I don't know what I'm talking about?" I feel like I'm about to explode, like anger is filling me up and pressing against my skin from the inside. I want to hit something, to hurt someone. I want to hurt Mark for being so calm, so—so fucking sympathetic with that loser. I grab his shoulders and shake him hard, make him look at me. "I don't know what I'm talking about? My grandfather fucking killed himself, Mark! He shot himself in the head in our garage! I was five and I saw him do it! I've seen it! He knew I was there and he did it anyway! I hate him! Don't tell me I don't fucking know what I'm talking about!"  
  
I can't believe his face. He jerks away, nursing his left shoulder. His eyes are wider than ever, and he just looks so scared. Terrified. It's like I've slapped him or something. The stands up, stumbling over his feet and staggers out of the room.  
  
MARK  
  
The room is so loud. When did it get so loud? So hot? I didn't take anything, this is different. This is worse than my worst trip ever because I know it might not end. Maybe I'll be like this forever. Maybe I've lost it for real.  
  
I can't keep the colors straight, the faces. They're all blurring together into this horrible mass and I can't breathe. There's something sitting on my chest, pushing all the air out. I'm standing but it doesn't matter, it's still there taking all my breath. My grandmother told me stories about Lilith, the helper of the Angel of Death. About how she sits on your chest and drinks your blood and waits for you to die. I feel like she's sitting on me and watching and waiting. She's an old hand at this. She knows how to wait.  
  
And suddenly the air is cold and it slaps my face. For a second I can see and breathe right. The air is so cold so cold, the snow is stark white and the sky is deep and black and it just goes on forever. I feel like I'm in a photograph. There are so many stars. There are so many wishes. I want to make them all. I want to wish on just one thing. One thing if only I could remember. I wish I could just stay in this picture. I want to stay in this black and white and cold. I want to stay here forever and never leave. I want to be safe here. Laura could come too, but no one else. She'd love it. She told me she loved snow.  
  
Then someone opens the door and the photo is shattered. Hot yellow light pours out the door and stains the snow, music (Bonzo Goes to Bittzburgh by the Ramones) comes blasting out, someone pitches forward and staggers across the snow, laughing. Then, before it can close all the way, someone else pushes it open and stumbles into the night.  
  
"Mark? Mark are you out here?"  
  
I hold dead still. Maybe he won't see me.  
  
"There you are."  
  
Aw, fuck.  
  
"Geez man, why'd you run out like that? Look, I'm sorry if I scared you it's just some things make me really angry and......"  
  
"Believe me, I could tell you were fucking angry." I say. I want to sound forceful, if only a little, but it comes out as barely a whisper. I know I'm going to lose him. This is the first time I've ever had a best friend, and I probably won't have another ever again. This is it. This was my chance and now it's totally blown. I mean, I knew he'd find out about Western Psyche eventually, but I hadn't really thought about what it would mean. Now I guess I know.  
  
"Will you tell me why you're so pissed? I was just telling you how I felt." He kneels in the snow in front of me, and for a second I'm afraid he'll shake me again.  
  
"I—I have to go," I gasp and surge upright. I'm not really thinking, just staggering away from him across the lawn. I can't think straight. I wish Laura were here.  
  
"Oh, fuck no!" he cries, and grabs my arm. I didn't realize how strong he is until he's holding my arm. I also didn't register how tall he is. Suddenly he seems to have grown six feet and put on about ten pounds of muscle. I know it's not accurate, but that's how it feels.  
  
"I have to go!" Somehow I wrench my arm away, and then I'm running. Haven't got a fucking clue where I'm going, just that it's away from here and away from Roger.  
  
Note: Awwww it's a cliff hanger. I hope this chapter came out okay, cause it's important. As always, thanks SO MUCH for reviewing! Thankyouthankyouthankyou! 


	7. seven

Wow! I got this amazingly good response to the last chapter, so I decided to move my lazy ass and put out another chapter. Just as warning, this doesn't really deal with the problems that Mark and Roger have been having, but it is important. So, please enjoy (and don't kill me!)  
  
Seven: Roger  
  
January—August, 1986  
  
A guitar is a catalyst. A blinding flash of light. A moment of sharp realization. It is an imaginary number. The endless stretch of possibilities, the rate at which, the number of times that something should, could, would, happen.  
  
A camera is a catalyst. It is a chemical reaction on a phenomenal scale. It is the sudden, almost bipolar swing from Hell On Wheels to Adult. It is sobriety. The ability to notice the previously invisible. To pick out the subtle and magnify it. It is it's own kind of drug.  
  
A party is a catalyst. The greatest I know. It is the moment in which every thing changes and you go from having a best friend to having no one and you don't understand what you said and will you ever?  
  
He won't talk to me. He avoids me for the rest of the school year. He does this thing, I hadn't really noticed it before, but I do now. He can make himself disappear. I don't mean it literally, but he has this way about him sometimes that suggests that he's too plain or insignificant to bother looking at. He does that, just goes quiet and fades away, when he wants to take pictures. And now he does it around me. I hardly see him around anymore. Either he's actively avoiding me, or he's doing the Amazing Disappearing Mark act. I think it's a little bit of both actually.  
  
I need to know what I did. What I said that upset him. I mean, I told him something really personal. No one else knows about what I saw, not even my mom. I just couldn't stand telling her I saw it. I didn't want them asking me anymore questions, I just wanted to go home and sleep forever. Maybe that's how my grandfather felt too. Only difference is, he off-ed himself.  
  
So there we. Are lonely suckers without best friends. Odd isn't it, that we became friends at a party and then lost each other at a party? Maybe there's some deeper meaning there, but I can't see it.  
  
All I know is I've gone from being confused, to being hurt, to being angry. So angry. I've never been this angry at someone since my grandfather. I don't understand him and he won't talk to me!  
  
So this is how we are. Between January and June we hardly see each other. We don't talk once. Then I go away from the summer and change and that seems to cement it in place. By the time I come back in September we are officially strangers. Not even ex-best friends, just strangers. Two people who met once at this Halloween party and then never talked to each other again. And minus a few fantastic months in between, I guess that's essentially what we are.  
  
Summer: the next catalyst. My uncle Rob says I can come back, as long as I don't lay a finger on his new dogs. Do I understand? Yes, yes I do. I will stay away from the dogs. I have to promise five times before he lets me into the house.  
  
So I spend the summer like I've spent the past seven, slopping around the farm, doing menial labor for no pay, driving Rob's pick up truck to town for the groceries. It's dull as dirt but it's my only option unless I can raise enough money to fly cross country to California and spend the summer with my mom.  
  
I notice the change, believe me, even a blind person would notice. I've been growing almost non stop since I was thirteen, and let's just say that for the last three years of my life I've been more like a collection of random limbs tied together with string than an actual person. I was skinny and tall and my feet were too big for the rest of me. I felt like Gumby or something. But over the summer I stop looking like a stork in a plaid shirt and start looking like an actual human being.  
  
However, it's not until almost the end of the summer that I finally figure out exactly how different I actually look.  
  
In all of Somerset County, there is only one club, and it's not even technically in Somerset. It's this old church that was de-sanctified and turned into a club. It's called Redemption (corny or what?). It's hot and the beer is bad (I hear this through the grape vine because I've never been there), but they've got a great D.J. and even if they didn't everyone would come because it's the only place for anyone under thirty to come.  
  
It's Peter's idea to go. Peter is this kid who lives a next door. In our patch of Somerset (not all of it is so rural) this means about five miles down the road. Peter's the kind of kid who loves to do risky things. The first summer I spent here he taught me how to use make an anfo bomb. Then we blew up a deserted car. So anyway, one evening he comes over with his best friend, Sal and announces that we're going to Redemption.  
  
"Don't be an idiot, we'll never get in. Do we look twenty one to you?" I ask.  
  
"Well, Sal and I don't but you could pass." He says, leaning against the propane tank by the back door.  
  
"Is your vision impaired? Since when do I look twenty one?" I tend to ask a lot of disbelieving or sarcastic questions when I'm around Peter.  
  
"Just wait and see, Roger. You'll get in. And if we're with you, so will we." He says, confident as ever. Sal nods firmly. He's a man of few words, Sal, probably because he's also a man of few brain cells.  
  
I'm sure that this won't work, so don't ask why two hours later I'm sitting in the driver's seat of Rob's pick up with Sal and Peter, bumping along the crappy country roads towards Redemption. We're never getting in, not in a million years.  
  
I wasn't expecting much, but even so Redemption is a disappointment. It's this tiny little white building with clapboard sidings and crappy stain glass windows. The ground around it is churned mud with beer cans and plastic cups and condoms embedded in it. It looks like a hick club and I almost turn around, but then I hear the music and somehow, I can't. The D.J. really is fantastic. He's got this great mix going and the beat is just....it's the most sexy thing I've ever heard is what it is.  
  
So I take a deep breath and follow Peter and Sal to the door.  
  
The bouncer stares at Peter (who looks about fourteen) for about ten minutes, then at Sal, who looks his age.  
  
"Go away." That's all. He doesn't even ask for I.D.  
  
Then he turns to me and I'm expecting more of the same, but he barely glances at my face before he stamps my hand. It takes me a second to register that. I've just gotten into a club. Is it freaky? Yes. Is it way cool? Totally. I am sixteen and for some reason I've gotten into a twenty one and up club. Divine intervention must have been involved. Appropriate, since this is a church.  
  
Still I'm reeling. Peter and Sal are sent packing, so I guess Peter's second prediction didn't come through, but I honestly don't care. I'm in a fucking club. This is amazing!  
  
The club is everything Rob told me it was. It's like an inferno in here. And the beer does suck, because they let me buy some (they let me buy beer?!) and the D.J. really does rock. Honestly this isn't much better than some parties I've been to. There are the same amount of illegal substances, there is the same bad alcohol. But it's different, too, because everyone is so much older and that makes it just a little cooler.  
  
I'm still reeling from my amazing luck when I see the guy in the mirror above the bar. I notice him because he's wearing the same faded Guns and Roses t-shirt as I am. He's cool! He pulls off the whole faded grungy look way better than I ever have. He doesn't come off looking like a hobo, he looks easy and relaxed and totally in his element. He's not spectacular looking, but he's got good bone structure and there's some aura about him that makes him seem way better looking than he is. But there's something up with his face he's got.....shit. He's got different color eyes.  
  
I spend five minutes feeling like a fucking moron before I realize that laps in intelligence aside (I mean who doesn't recognize their own reflection?) this is a very very good thing. I look older than sixteen, that's obvious enough, I could do a lot with this. I could really use it. It's an imaginary number. A set of amazing possibilities. Infinite chances that I can't waste.  
  
Note: kk! That's that. Roger is rull dumb, no? o well. Next chapter will get into Junior year in high school so we can hear from Marky-Larky. Be ready for the Uber-Angst and, as always, thanks so much for reviewing. It make-eth me so happy! 


	8. eight

Okay, so this chapter gets more to the point, I promise! Sorry about the last one, because it was kind of filler, but I wanted to get across how Roger changed and I thought that just throwing you into a new school year where Roger is suddenly hot would be a little jarring.  
  
Eight: Mark  
  
Junior Year 1986-87  
  
By November we are both infamous. Somehow by junior year we have both grown in status from Relatively Invisible to Notorious. We have made names for ourselves, both of us. Never mind that his is vastly different from mine. I'm that creepy pothead kid. The one who skips physics to smoke and takes those trippy pictures when you aren't looking. I am the freak who sits in his car with the windows rolled up, decoding Doors lyrics with Chris and Sharon, tapping ash from the pipe's screen, licking the rolling papers like I was born with a joint in my hand.  
  
And Roger.....Roger is the Most Changed. Some how grown in three months from sixteen and awkward to handsome, dangerous, looks too old for high school. Roger famous already for his fantastic guitar solos, for pensive songs. Famous for lines of crack at Tim Mair's house, for drugs dangerous enough to make me wince. He's changed and suddenly it's not just my overly cautious parents who don't want him coming over, it's every mother and father in Scarsdale. From what I hear (and I hear a lot) he's slept his way through half the junior girls by Thanksgiving.  
  
And I can't help worrying. I don't want to, really I don't, but I can't help it. It's easy enough to say you don't give a damn about someone anymore. Easy to say, but try to put that into action when that person was your best friend for the best part of a year. Just try. See how you do. I may be a pothead, but I'm not as bad as some. I know enough not to come to class stoned everyday (though it does help me get through math) and I've sworn off anything stronger. But Roger....he's going to fast. I want to tell him to stop. I can almost see something horrible careening towards him and my impulse is to pull him out of harms way for a nice long talk. But it's not that easy. We haven't spoken since last year and now it's too late. We don't even know each other anymore. I didn't recognize him on the first day of school, not at first. I saw this guy, he looked familiar and I wondered if he was from Pittsburgh or something. Then I realized.....I just couldn't get over it. No one could. He looked so different.  
  
So this is how we have changed. I take my pictures. Spend the best part of my life in a dark room tinkering with them. As a result I look almost albino and smell like developing fluid, cigarettes, unwashed teenage boy, and pot all the time. I know this isn't a pleasant mixture and I also know that aside from the fact that I've gained a reputation as being Totally Creepy, my smell is what keeps people away from me. Honestly, I like it that way. Sharon and Chris are the only ones who don't seem to mind, and they're fine company. Chris's brain is so fried that he can barely hold a conversation and Sharon is so busy being depressed that she doesn't talk too much. We're a perfect trio.  
  
I can't lie, though. I still think about Roger and Laura a lot. I miss them both like crazy. I've written Laura, but so far she hasn't written back. This leaves two possibilities, either she's out of the psyche ward or she's dead. It's not possible that she hasn't written back because she doesn't want to. Laura told me to write, and she never says anything that she doesn't mean.  
  
As for Roger, well.....I don't see him so much. We're in the same classes but we never sit together. We don't talk we don't look we just exist side by side like two strangers. Some days I think it's better that way, but others all I want is a best friend again. It sucks, basically. But what can I do? He'd hat me as much as he hates his grandfather if he knew why we really moved to Scarsdale. He'd despise me and it would be him doing the leaving. That's why I had to do it first. I had to beat him to the punch. Does that make me a bad person? Well, yes actually it does. But I try to ignore it.  
  
I think about this stuff a lot. Mostly during class, if I'm there. The only class I really pay attention to is English. I know I'm doing badly. My grades for this year so far really suck in all my other subjects and to quote my dad "You'll never get into an Ivy League University with grades like these, Mark!". "You know what your problem is, Mark? This camera! All you do is take pictures and write short stores. Pictures and stories won't put food on your plate, Mark."  
  
Well maybe I don't want to go to college. Maybe I can do with out three square meals. All I really want to do is take pictures. I want to take as many as I can. I want to capture every second of life and look at it. Then I want to write about it. Maybe if I do that, I can understand it better.  
  
Of course I'll never say that. I'm not stupid, contrary to popular family belief. I'm not a slacker, either. If I were a slacker I wouldn't bother with the pictures or the stories. They're important. They really are.  
  
My math teacher, however, doesn't see it that way.  
  
"Mr. Cohen, what are you writing?"  
  
I stare up at her. I feel like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi. She's never asked me a question before. "Notes?"  
  
"Do you take notes so studiously every day?" she asks, peering at me over her glasses. I'm not sure where she's going with this, but my spider sense tells me that it's a trap.  
  
"Yes ma'am." I push my glasses up my nose and try desperately to look innocent. I wonder if it's working.  
  
"Mr. Cohen, could you tell me please, what was the last grade you received on a test for me?" she asks, the hint of a smirk tugging the corner of her mouth.  
  
So that's where she's taking this. Shit. "Um...an E." I mumble into my paper. This is humiliating. I used to get really good grades in math.  
  
"Hmmm. Class, let's tackle a little logic problem shall we? Mr. Davis!" She whacks Roger's desk with her ruler and he jolts out of hibernation with a startled snort. The class giggles.  
  
"George Washington!" he blurts out. A girl in the back of the room snorts. The math teacher frowns.  
  
"Mr. Davis, would you mind answering a question for me?" I never realized how many questions this woman actually asks.  
  
Roger tugs at his collar and swallows hard. Math is not his subject. "Sure?" He says. He adopts the expression of the bravely doomed. He is a prisoner being lead to the chopping block. He knows his fate, and he is resigned.  
  
"Good. Good. Alright, Mr. Davis. We have been in this class for three and a half months, correct?"  
  
"Yes ma'am."  
  
"And during this time, how many tests have we had?"  
  
"Um.....er.....about ten?"  
  
"Roughly, yes. Now say Mr. Cohen has been taking studious notes since the beginning of the year. How would you expect him to do on his tests?"  
  
Roger glances at me and our eyes meet. This is the first real contact we've had since school began. Once again I'm struck by how different he looks.  
  
"Well.....well that depends, ma'am." Says Roger, surprising us all. How does that depend? The answer seems obvious to me. It's clearly obvious to our math teacher. I know Roger isn't that dumb.  
  
"How does it depend, Mr. Davis?" asks the teacher, glaring at him.  
  
"Well there are a lot of factors to take into consideration here. I mean, there are infinite possibilities, aren't there? Maybe Mark has terrible handwriting and he takes the notes, but then he can't read them. If he can't read them, he can't study from them. Or maybe Mark's a terrible note taker. Maybe he's the worst note taker in the world so they don't make any sense at all. Or maybe it's a combination of both. Or it could be," he shoots a grin at me. I remember that grin and I can't help but return it. I know something is coming. Something really, really good. "That Mark is the world champion note taker of the universe. His notes are fantastic. His handwriting is superb. However, if that's the case, then why is he doing so badly on tests? That's why you asked the question isn't it? Because he's getting really bad grades. Well aside from the fact that he's a pothead" he pronounces it PO-theed and the class giggles, "which actually wouldn't be such a problem because he's really smart any way, there must be another factor. There's an x factor in here somewhere that's keeping him from doing well, and I think that' I've spotted it." Roger sits up very straight, drawing himself up to full height and raising his chin triumphantly, "The problem, the x factor, is that you are a bad teacher." The room goes dead quiet.  
  
"Excuse me, Mr. Davis?" says the math teacher. Her voice is dripping venom.  
  
"He said, Madam Hitler, that you are a bad teacher." Is that me talking? Oh, God, yes. "You are, in fact, a terrible teacher. You are the worst teacher I have ever had. I figured it out on day one and gave up on you. So no, it's not notes I'm taking and even if they were they wouldn't make any sense because you're just so pathetically bad at your job. I'm sure Roger figured out the same thing, which is why he's using your class as a chance to sleep. Am I right, Mr. Davis?"  
  
Roger forces his face into a look of mock seriousness, "You most certainly are, Mr. Cohen. In fact, I tire of this dreary place. Shall we retire?"  
  
"Yes I think we shall."  
  
And then we stand and stride off into the sunset. I know we're going to face some serious consequences for this. I don't like to think about the possibility of being expelled, but it's pretty real. Maybe we'll only get suspended.  
  
We walk side by side down the halls in total silence. Every now and then we catch each other's eye and our faces split into these huge grins. My the time we get out to the parking lot, my face hurts from smiling.  
  
"I just got my license. What say we go somewhere?" asks Roger, fishing car keys out of his pocket.  
  
"Sure," I say. I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable again. By the time we slide into his car and pull out of the parking lot all I want to do is get out and run away.  
  
We drive in silence for a long time. Roger seems to have a destination in mind. Eventually we stop by the old playground down the block from his house. It's fallen into severe disrepair over the years. The swing sets are rusting, the wooden jungle gym is eaten by termites, and it's covered with graffiti. Mostly it's used now by kids like us.  
  
We settle on the ancient merry-go-round and spin slowly and squeakily for a while, puffing quietly on our cigarettes, sifting quietly through our thoughts.  
  
"Thank you," I say quietly after about fifteen minutes. "For today."  
  
"No problem," he says quietly.  
  
"It could be. What d'you think they'll do to us?" I ask, fiddling with the frayed hem of my sweater.  
  
He shrugs, "Suspend us? I don't think they can expel us. We didn't threaten her or anything."  
  
We sit quietly for another five minutes. Suddenly it just pops out of my mouth. "Sorry."  
  
"What for?"  
  
"For.....for freaking out. For most of last year. For a lot of this year. Sorry. I just....." I shake my head. I feel like an idiot.  
  
He shakes his head, "I just don't understand." He glances at me from under his hair. How many times have I seen him do that? "I was just.....I only wanted to tell you how I felt. I thought you'd agree with me. I thought everyone except really morbid people thought suicide was bad and stupid."  
  
I sigh and pull out another smoke, "I know. But there are things you don't understand. I'm so sorry about you're granddad. Really I am. You shouldn't have had to see that. But you don't know what he was feeling. You really don't."  
  
"Oh yeah? And you do?" he asks with an edge of anger in his voice.  
  
"Yes!" I snap. I'm starting to get mad. Not scared, mad. He just won't listen! "I know exactly how he felt. Believe me, I do. I know exactly what he was thinking. And I know he would have regretted it. Had he lived, believe me he would have regretted it forever. But people like you! People like you just wouldn't have let me forget! You would have brought it up again and again and I feel guilty all the time! You're just like my dad! My fucking dad!"  
  
I hadn't realized I was standing till now.  
  
"Jesus, Mark. Did you.....?"  
  
"It's why we moved to Scarsdale," I say more quietly. I sit back down. Roger paces in front of me.  
  
"You tried to kill yourself?" he asks. "You?"  
  
"Yeah," it comes out in a tired sigh. I'm so tired. I'm just so tired.  
  
"How?" he whispers. He sinks down next to me. Suddenly he seems so much younger.  
  
"Do you honestly want an answer to that?" I ask.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Fifty asprin. One bottle of Jack Daniels." I chew a nail. Maybe he'll hit me. I'd deserve it.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"It's too much to explain. I can't even try. I was just so bored with everything.....no that's not right. It's more than that. I just can't explain it." I shake my head and laugh bitterly. "I'm sorry. Now you know why I was avoiding you. I knew you'd find out and I knew you wouldn't want to be friends with me anymore so I tried to keep away from you. But you know now so.....please don't tell the whole school. I don't think my family can handle another move."  
  
And then he says the last thing I expected him to say. "But you're still alive. How are you still alive?"  
  
"After I'd taken them all, I realized what a fucking idiot I was so I walked into my sister's room and told her to call 911. Then I fainted. I woke up when they were pumping my stomach. Trust me, that is not a pleasant experience." I glance over at him. He doesn't look angry, just thoughtful.  
  
"Were you in.....like a psych ward or something?" I asks, cautiously.  
  
"Yeah. Western Pennsylvania Psychiatric. Lovely place. The tater-tots are shaped like smiley faces."  
  
He snorts. "Sounds comparable with the Hilton."  
  
"Oh, yes. I especially like the relaxation therapy."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"Thorazine."  
  
"You've been on Thorazine?" he asks. He just sounds curious now, not scared or judgmental.  
  
"Yeah. Just once. I had a major freak out."  
  
"What's it like?"  
  
I squint, trying to remember. "Well it tastes horrible. But it's like....the world gets softer. Your feet are ten times bigger and everything is made out of squishy mattresses. Basically it just takes you way out of it."  
  
He shakes his head. "Wow man, that's really.....amazing."  
  
"Don't you hate me?" I'm so confused. He sounds friendly. I just don't understand.  
  
"No, of course not. I....you're my best friend. I know you outside of this and now I know you in this context too and.....well you're the same person and.....maybe I'm the one who needs to think a little harder. Maybe I have to learn to have some sympathy. I can be sympathetic without agreeing with it, can't I?"  
  
"Yeah." I'm smiling so hard my face feels ready to crack. "Fuck, yeah."  
  
"You won't," he swallows hard, "you wont try it again?"  
  
"Never." And as I say it, I know it's true.  
  
My grandmother once told me that at one point in his or her life, every person has their own small Armageddon. A time when some part of us dies, and another part forms. We grow up and we fight, and it shapes us forever. I thought that mine was the day I took all those aspirin and I thought it ended when I left western psyche. What I didn't realize was that it hadn't ended until today, here, on this rusty merry-go-round. I fought and I won, but I didn't do it alone. I guess you can never do it alone. And it's in this moment when I give up my wishes and decide that living and doing are the only solutions. If I want understand life, I have to stop wishing for things to change and do something about them. I have to stop running away. I have to stick with people and have faith. Always have faith.  
  
Note: so that's it. Soooooooo sappy. Sappy like a tree full of sappy sap! Sorry, but I cant help it sometimes. Hope you enjoyed and as always, thank everyone so much for reviewing. The only thing that would make me happier than lots and lots of reviews would be if Johnny Depp showed up and decided to live in my attic. 


	9. nine

Note: so sorry for the delay, my computer freaked out and I just now got my lap top on line. Also, I know that by the end of senior year they will both be eighteen, and so the title won't work as well but.....oh well. I wasn't thinking about that when I started this.  
  
Nine: Roger  
  
Senior year, 1987-88  
  
"It doesn't look that bad." Mark twists his head to the side and squints at the thin rectangle of plastic in my hand, "I mean, what did you expect? ID photos never look good, especially your driver's license. It's like a law of nature or something."  
  
"Yes, well be that as it may, most people at least have eyebrows in their driver ID pictures!" I snap. Mark smirks.  
  
"It's your own fault that you didn't have eyebrows in that picture," he says. His face is twitching from trying to hold back laughter.  
  
"MY fault? How the hell is it my fault? YOU were the one who shaved them off!" I want to strangle him. I mean, he's my best friend and I love him to death, but I still want to beat him over the head with a blunt object.  
  
"And YOU were the one who passed out first at that party. If you hadn't had so much to drink, you wouldn't have passed out and I wouldn't have had to shave them off."  
  
"That makes no sense, Mark! You didn't have to do anything!"  
  
"Don't try to reason with me, I'm mentally unstable. You'll talk yourself blue but you won't get anywhere."  
  
The bell signaling the end of lunch cuts through the babble of talk in the cafeteria. I shove my unfortunate driver's license into my back pocket and follow Mark into the hall.  
  
"Look at this as revenge for my camera," he says after a moment.  
  
"That wasn't my fault!" I protest. He glares at me. "Well maybe it was.....sort of......in an indirect way. I mean, I did start the whole math class fiasco. But you contributed to it, too. It was mostly your dad's fault, anyhow."  
  
After our little math class escapade we were banned from Algebra (or whatever it was we were taking) for the rest of the year. We had to go to summer school to make up our grades. My parents were okay about it. I mean, they told me that I did a dumb ass thing, but we all knew that I had a snow flake's chance in hell of getting into college anyway, so how I do in high school doesn't really matter. Just as long as I don't get expelled I'm A- okay. Mark's family, on the other hand, weren't so understanding. Both his parents went to Harvard, his older sister is in her second year at Columbia. They have a family history of going to extremely good schools and Mark's getting banned from math wasn't exactly going to look good on his college application (oh, I'm sorry his university application). His dad got uber pissed and started screaming about how he was letting the family down, he was stupid, he was lazy, he was sloppy, he was a disappointment, no son of mine, spends too much time with that fucking camera, blah blah BLAH blahity blahblah. Then when Mark started shouting back his dad grabbed the Nikon and chucked it across the room. Now, it was a sturdy little camera, it had survived being dropped about a gazillion times but it didn't survive the wrath of Papa Cohen.  
  
"It wasn't your fault really." he looks thoughtful for a second "I wish I could shave my dad's eyebrows off."  
  
"Why can't you?" I ask, rubbing my newly sprouted eyebrows ruefully.  
  
"Because he spends all day locked in his coffin, sound asleep amongst the dirt of his homeland. During the night he's too busy drinking the blood of the innocent for me to get him."  
  
I snort, "Been watching Dracula again, have we?"  
  
"Maaaaybe....."  
  
"Which one?"  
  
"Winnona Rider, Gary Oldman."  
  
"I like that one. It's like soft porn only with lots of blood. Do you wanna cut class?"  
  
"Can't. I have few possessions left that my dad hasn't broken. If he finds out I've skipped class again I think he'll throw me against a wall." Mark grimaces. "Besides, I like my next class."  
  
"What is it, film studies?" I ask.  
  
He nods. "I get to sit around for eighty minutes watching moves. What could be better?"  
  
"Skipping class."  
  
"Not an option."  
  
"Well fine then. I'll skip and you can go to nerds united."  
  
"Will do." He salutes me and swings through the door of his class. I cut off to the science block steps to have smoke break. Life, such as it is, is good.  
  
LATER  
  
The problem with having a best friend who's family his obsessed with getting him into an Ivy League school at all costs is that you spend a lot of time either alone or actually doing your homework. I'm not used to this thing called homework. It is a strange and alien concept, but I do it anyway so Mark won't feel so alone (and so I won't have to go home and face my step mom, the eighth wonder of the world, our Lady Sharyl of the Bare Ass.)  
  
I wish that she'd just put some clothes on. I like her, I really do, it's just that her nakedness is really gross. I bought her a bathrobe for Christmas but she never wears it. If she wanted walk around bare-assed, she should have joined a nudist colony or a convent like my mother did. Maybe she could join the same convent and walk around in those weird robe things picking vegetables.  
  
My mom left dad and me when I was eight to join this cult type thing in southern California where all these people walk around in bright orange robes and plant their own food and farm and stuff. Dad and I have visited her a few times. We didn't wear the robes but we ate and picked with them. It seemed kind of boring. My dad was surprisingly mellow about the whole thing. But then, he's one of those hippie types. He's always wearing his "University of Hard Knock" sweatshirt. Because of him I've been able to role a joint since I was six. He grows pot in his closet, sells it to his friends. That's how he met Naked Sharyl (she wasn't naked when he met her, or I hope she wasn't). They've been living together for eight years now.  
  
So you see, my family makes Mark's look almost normal. I mean, who else can say that they've got a nudist step mom, a father who is basically a white Rastafarian, and a mother who's in a cult? Let's have a show of hands, shall we?  
  
But I digress. So we're sitting in Mark's room. I'm brooding over my driver's license photo. The thing about not having eyebrows is that it takes people a while to notice what's wrong. They sit there, looking. They know something is off, but they can't say what. Then it hits them like a tone of bricks. You have no eyebrows. This totally freaks them out. You can almost see them wondering why. Interestingly enough, you are often wondering the same thing.  
  
In the kitchen the phone shrieks. No one else is home, and Mark's too engrossed in a trig problem to answer it so I forget the license for a minute and run down stairs to get it.  
  
"Cohen residence," oh I'm sooo polite. Check me out, man!  
  
"Hey, can I talk to Mark." It's a girl. She's got an amazing voice, smoky and smooth. I can almost see it swirling down the telephone line and curling out through the tiny holes in the receiver.  
  
"Sure," I have to stop and clear my throat. Amazing that just a voice could do this to me, "Just a second." I clamp my hand over the mouth piece and shout up to Mark to come down, pronto.  
  
"Who is it?" he asks.  
  
"No idea. A girl." I hand him the receiver, wishing the call were for me.  
  
"Hello?" This is the last normal sounding word that comes out of his mouth. The second the person on the other end starts talking his face goes dead white. He's pressing the phone hard against his ear, like he wants to fall right through it. "You what?.....when? I—I don't understand.....how? No.....no I.....where are you? Yes. Yes, I'm on my way." He sets the phone gently back in the cradle, like it's made of glass. At this moment, he's the one who looks as if he's made of glass, as if he could shatter at any moment. He clutches the table top for support and stares down at his ands like they belong to someone else.  
  
"Who was that?" I ask. I want to touch him. To reach out and grab his shoulder, but I'm afraid that if I do he'll break into a million pieces like his Nikon.  
  
"Do you remember when I told you about Laura?" he asks softly.  
  
I nod.  
  
"Well she's.....she's in New York. She wants me to go get her." He's speaking like a man in a dream, like he can't quite believe what he's saying.  
  
"They let her out?"  
  
He shakes his head slowly, "No. No I think she escaped. I think she finally fucking did it! We have to go. We have to go now and get her."  
  
"How are we going to find her?" I ask.  
  
"She said she's staying at the Land of Smiles motel, it's in East Village. We should be able to find it." he looks around the kitchen like he's never seen one before. "Let's go. Let's go now . We can take your car."  
  
There are about a thousand misgivings swarming through my head, bumping into each other like heavy black bugs but I don't have time to look at them closely. Mark's already out the door and it's all I can do to catch up to him. It's only when we're already half an hour away from Mark's house that I start actually thinking clearly. What exactly are we going to do when we find her? My inclination is to take her back to Western Psyche. If she escaped like Mark thinks she did, then she should be back there. She needs to go back there. But what if she won't? What then? What will our parents do to us? Assuming she comes quietly, we're still going to have to drive all the way to Pittsburgh and who knows how long that'll take? God, there are so many holes in this plan. This is possibly the dumbest thing I have ever done in a short but packed lifetime of dumb things.  
  
But even as I'm thinking this, I know there's no turning back. I can't abandon this now. I have to stick it out for Mark. One look at him and I can see how much of his sanity is riding on this. He has to help her. There is some debt here. Something deeper than what I can see and what he's told me. There is some tie between these two that I'll never understand, all I know is he's bound by it to help her. And although I don't want to admit it, I'm also doing this for Laura. For the smoky voice over the telephone. I'm doing it to see what's waiting at the end. I want to see this girl who is so important to Mark, to understand better what is so compelling about her.  
  
So I shove the worries to the very back of my mind. I role down my window so the twilight air rushes in and slaps my face. I turn the radio up and blast it loud enough to make my bones rattle like maracas. Here we are, heading far away from everything quiet and vaguely normal. Laura is pulling us like some kind of magnet. Pulling us farther and farther away, down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland.  
  
Otay!! There it is. Chapter nine. I hope you likes. Please review, please! And once again, sorry for the delay! 


	10. ten

A/N: okay, next chappie (woot!). I just want to say as a heads up that all information concerning western psyche is second hand, so there is a great and overriding possibility that none of it is accurate, and I borrowed the privileges system from the book "Girl Interrupted" (good movie, but better book). Wow that's a long sentence. Anyway, thank you so much for reviewing the last chapter, and enjoy!  
  
Ten: Roger  
  
By the time we find East Village it's midnight and the air has turned cold. I'm exhausted from driving, so we stop at a McDonalds and buy some burnt coffee. It may taste funky, but it keeps me going. I don't know how we're going to get to Pittsburgh. We've only got three dollars and twenty seven cents when we pull all our money, plus the change from between the cracks in the seats of the car.  
  
We find the Land of Smiles by stopping every five minutes and asking people where it is. Almost everyone knows, but no one gives very good directions and we keep getting lost. I want to scream and hit someone with one of the windshield wipers, but it wouldn't be such a hot idea.  
  
Then, at long LONG last, we find it. It's this moldy little hotel with a flickery neon sign in a window reading LAND OF SMIL S OTEL. Nice place. Really four star.  
  
I hear Mark suck in his breath and glance out his window. There's a girl standing in the doorway under the stuttering red glow of the neon sign, smoking a cigarette. She looks like a fallen angel, bathed in this uncanny red light. She doesn't have eyes, just black smudges, her mouth is a wide gash across her face. She's dressed oddly; ripped fishnets under cut off shorts, and a huge black plaid men's shirt over a black tank top. She's got red sandals on her feet, but not the normal kind. They're those plastic things that you can get at the 7-11 for fifty cents. Jellies. I've never seen anyone over the age of seven wearing jellies.  
  
Mark opens the door and staggers out of the car before it's stopped moving completely. He moves forward in three odd, loping steps before the falls to his knees. Then he's right back up again, moving toward her, grabbing her up in a tight hug. She hugs him just as hard, she's dropped her cigarette, and it glows for a moment on the pavement before putting itself out.  
  
After what seems like forever they break apart and walk toward the car. Laura hasn't let go of Mark's hand and it makes getting into the car hard. They slide into the back seat and somehow Mark manages to squeeze between the two front seats and to drop into the passenger's side without letting go of her hand once.  
  
"Slick," I say and he grins shakily. There's a new smell in the car. Thick and spicy and almost cloyingly sweet, like cheep mall incense and cigarettes. Must be Laura. She pokes her head between the seats and smiles. One of her front teeth is crooked. It leans over and against the other like a drunk slumped against a table leg.  
  
"Who're you?" she asks. Her accent is odd, a little like Mark's, but more defined.  
  
"I'm Roger. Roger Davis."  
  
"Well I'm Laura. Laura Johnson." Live her voice is just the same, all smoke and air. She brushes her hair behind her ear and I notice that her nails are bitten down to the quick. "Home, James." She says, and pats me on the head like a good doggy.  
  
It's only when we hit the turn pike that I stop holding my breath. I don't know what I was waiting for. Maybe it's just the city air that makes me feel as if something big is bearing down on my head. Some amazing catalyst. New York is full of these imaginary numbers.  
  
"How did you do it?" asks Mark.  
  
Laura laughs, "I got grounds, if you'd believe it!"  
  
Mark snorts, "You got grounds?"  
  
It's like they're speaking in code or something. "What are grounds?" I ask.  
  
"There's this hierarchy in Loony Bins, right?" says Mark. "You start out when you get there with zero privileges. You can only go as far as the common room and your bedroom. One up from that is one to ones. That's when you have a nurse following you around like some fucking shadow. One to ones is worse than zero privileges. After one to ones there's one to twos. Two patients, one nurse. Then it's group, one nurse to about five patients. After group is grounds. Grounds is when you can go anywhere in the hospital just a long as you have a pass. After grounds is town. If you get town (but no one does) you can leave the hospital and go anywhere you want, but you have to tell the head nurse where you're going. When you get there you have to call. You also have to call before you leave."  
  
I nod. "Sounds suffocating."  
  
"Well that's why I had to get out," says Laura. She pulls out a smoke and starts packing it. I've never seen someone pack only one cigarette at a time.  
  
"I still don't get how you did it," says Mark.  
  
"I climbed out the window in the playroom and slid down the drain pipe," she says, taking a long drag.  
  
"Bullshit." Laughs Mark, "It's three floors up."  
  
"Well I don't know what else to tell you."  
  
"The truth would be nice."  
  
"The truth's so boring though!" she protests, "I like this version better."  
  
"Laura......"  
  
"Oh fine ! Okay, in all honesty I just walked out the front door. I was in street clothes, so no one questioned me. I just told the new nurse that I had towns and the idiot let me walk right out. She even opened my locker and gave me my old clothes and stuff. I love interns." She grins triumphantly at us. For a second, I feel almost bad about taking her back to Western.  
  
"Hey, turn up the radio. I love this song!" says Laura. Mark cranks up the volume and "Angel is the Centerfold" comes blaring out of the speakers.  
  
THOSE SOFT FUZZY SWEATERS, TOO MAGICAL TO TOUCH/ TO SEE HER IN THAT NEGLIGEE IS REALLY JUST TOO MUCH/ MY BLOOD RUNS COLD/ MY MEMORY HAS JUST BEEN SOLD/ MY ANGEL IS THE CENTERFOLD (ANGEL IS THE CENTERFOLD)/ NA NA NANA NA NA NANANA NANANA NA NA  
  
For a second I feel normal again. I'm not driving my best friend's psycho ex-girlfriend back to the funny farm. I'm just a normal kid on a road trip with his friends (one of whom is crazy).  
  
I just can't seem to get that part of it out of my head. As much as I try, it's always there, like a bad smell. I look at Laura and all I can think is 'crazy crazy crazy! Sheeeeee's a psycho!'. It was like that when Mark first told me he had tried to off himself. I never let on, but for weeks and weeks every time I looked at him all I could think was 'he tried to kill himself'. It doesn't happen anymore, thank God. It's like time has worn away the rough edges on that part of his past, and it's just become another thing that makes Mark who he is.  
  
Half way home we stop at a 7-11 so Laura can go to the bathroom. Mark and I sit in the dark car, waiting for her and staring up at Wendy's giant head, smiling innocently down at us from across the street, forever twelve and freckled. She's still old enough to wear pigtails without it being kinky and she always will be. I'm not sure if this is a blessing or a curse or if I should stop thinking about it because she is, after all, a sign. She is not a real person she's a giant neon bust.  
  
"What are you thinking?" asks Mark. I can't bear to tell him about my deep philosophical thoughts concerning Wendy so I say instead,  
  
"I'm wondering how we'll get to Pittsburgh and back on only three dollars and twenty seven cents."  
  
"Pittsburgh? Why the hell would we go there?" he asks, sounding genuinely puzzled.  
  
"Because, in case you'd forgotten, that's where Western Psyche is." I say.  
  
"No fucking way." Says Mark firmly.  
  
"What?" Now I'm the one who's puzzled. Didn't we agree on this?  
  
"We can't take her back there, she just got out!" he cries.  
  
"She didn't get out, Mark, she escaped. This implies (at least to me) that she needs to go back because the de-crazy-fication process isn't quite finished yet." What is this boy thinking? I thought Mark was the sensible one here.  
  
"We're not taking her back," he says. I've never heard him talk like this before. His voice has gone totally cold. He's angry, I realize. He's angrier at me than he's ever been and it's scary.  
  
"Well then where exactly is she going to stay? I don't think your parents will take too kindly to a girl crashing in your bedroom." I point out.  
  
"No, but your parents won't care," he says. I'm so relieved that he isn't angry that the full meaning of what he's said hasn't sunk in yet. I'm still not too hot for this new plan, but what can I do? The majority vote is against me (I'm assuming that Laura won't want to go back, though if she did I'd be more than happy to oblige her).  
  
"Wait a sec, my house?" I blurt the second my brain processes what he's said. "No way!"  
  
"Well where else can she stay? It's only for a night, two at the most. All she needs is a bus ticket to Vermont."  
  
"Vermont? What's in Vermont?" I ask.  
  
"Her grandma. She told me over the phone that she was going to stay with her." He says.  
  
"Why didn't she just do that in the first place?" I ask.  
  
Mark shrugs. "She said she wanted to stay in New York at first, but she vetoed that plan pretty quick. New York's too rough for her, I guess."  
  
I think about that for a while. I'm still trying to decide if everything or nothing seems too rough for Laura when she slides back into the car. She tosses pre-packaged doughnuts at the backs of our heads.  
  
"Sustinence." She says.  
  
"You don't have any money," I say, right before I start feeling like a big moron. "They wanted to be free. I liberated them." She munches on a doughnut and grins at us.  
  
I have to wonder why I can't stop being surprised by this girl. I'd thought I was so experienced. I thought that just because I went to a couple of lame suburban house parties, slept with some girls, and gotten high that I was some kind of bad ass. And now here I am, driving along with this strange girl and she keeps throwing me for a loop. I can't predict what will happen next. I don't like Laura, she has this irritating proprietary air when it comes to Mark. She acts like she has copyright on him or something. Plus I'm scared of her. I'm scared of her craziness. Of her determination to stop herself short. Of the self righteous way she parades the fact that she tried to kill herself so many times. She wears it like a badge of honor and holds it over my head constantly. Mark measures up because he tried to do the same thing, but she looks at me as some kind of puppy, someone ignorant about everything and not worth her respect because I didn't—and never will—do what she did.  
  
Well fuck her. I'm only doing this for Mark. I'm only letting her stay at my house for tonight because Mark likes her so much (though why I'll never know).  
  
I spend the rest of the ride seething in a rising tide of irritation. I really really don't like this girl. More than that, I don't trust her.  
  
She just won't stop moving around in the back seat. First she kicks off her shoes. Then she lies on her back and sticks her feet in the air and walks them back and forth across the ceiling. Then she's sitting up again, reaching between Mark and me to crank up the radio and singing along at the top of her lungs. Then she opens her window and sticks her head out. After that she shrugs off her over shirt and snakes her arms around Mark's neck, from behind. She grabs one of his hands and starts gnawing on the fingernails and he just lets her. It's disgusting!  
  
"What the hell are you....." I never get a chance to finish because it's then that I see her arms.  
  
Her arms ! God, at first I thought that the marks were just shadows cast by the little droplets of water on the windshield, but that goes out the window pretty quickly. It's the smiley face that catches my eye. It grins cheekily from her left shoulder, mocking me with its long eyes. It's a soft brown, like a bizarre birthmark. It's no shadow, but maybe it's just henna or something. But then I see more of them. Dozens of little smiley faces beaming up from her arms. A little manic army on the edge of hysterical giggles. Most of them are that same soft, fawn brown like large beauty marks but some are shiny and pink or slightly scabby. It hits me like a sledgehammer, they aren't henna, they're burns . She's burned little smiley faces into her arms. She lifts her outside arm to brush a lock of hair out of her eyes and I get a view of the inside of her right arm. It's riddled with long, thin slash marks. Most are horizontal or diagonal but there's one, long shiny red one that runs from wrist to elbow. It's like the big mamma of scars, and the others are its babies. The scars also have varying degrees of freshness. Some are faded to brownish-pink. Others are scabby or shockingly red and fresh. How did she get away with it? How could she do that in a place where she's supposed to be kept safe from all that? Where she's supposed to be stopped?  
  
Laura catches me staring and grins savagely, "I call it Bubba," she says, nodding at the scar on her right arm. "And this is Esther." She raises her left arm and turns it so I can see a matching scar there.  
  
"Shut up, Laura." Says Mark quietly. Laura stares at him for a long moment before sliding her arms away from him and huddling in the back seat.  
  
"Turn the music up!" she says, after a moment. The song is already roaring out of the speakers, but Mark turns it up as far as it will go. "BAM BAM BAMBAM BA-BAM BAM BAMBAM! I WANNA BE SEDATED!" she screams along with the Ramones.  
  
"You're such a stupid fucker, Mark." She says after a moment.  
  
"I know," he says. "I'm going to stay with my grandma, Mark. With my fucking grandma. Understand? My fucking grandma!" she's screaming now.  
  
"I understand," he says, calm as ever. How can he be so calm?  
  
"No you don't! You don't understand! The fucking world's got you by the fucking balls! You're treating me like they do! You're a stupid fucker, Mark! I hate you!" she lunges forward and grabs his hair. "Stupid fucker!"  
  
"We're taking you to your grandma, Laura." He says, his voice shaking slightly. "Calm down."  
  
"Don't tell me to fucking calm down! Don't tell me! Don't tell me anything! I want out. I want to get out of the car. Stop the car, Roger." She lets go of Mark's hair and slumps down in the back seat.  
  
"Don't stop the car." Mark pleads. "Please, man."  
  
I nod. I'm not stopping the car.  
  
"You were right. Can we get there on three twenty seven?" I look over at him. It's breaking his heart to say it. I can tell. It's like earlier, in the kitchen. He looks like he's going to shatter at any minute.  
  
"I don't know. I just don't know. How many toll booths are we going to go through?" my voice is shaking. I wish it wouldn't. I want to sound strong for him.  
  
He shakes his head. "Too many. We'll call at the next gas station."  
  
"Call who?" I ask. "Her parents?"  
  
"The cops," he says softly, "I don't know her home number. We'll call the cops and they can take her home."  
  
I nod again. We ride in silence, punctuated by swearing from Laura in the back seat. I turn into the first gas station I see.  
  
"Do you want me to do it?" I ask. He nods, tight lipped and I wonder how much this is costing him.  
  
I feed the quarters into the pay phone and dial 9-1-1.  
  
"What is the nature of your emergency?" asks the operator.  
  
"I—I don't know exactly. My friend is sick. She needs to go back to the hospital. She ran away......I just don't know what to call it. She's—she's crazy, I guess. She needs to go back to the hospital."  
  
"What is your location?"  
  
"A gas station. Exxon. In.....somewhere between Scarsdale and New York City."  
  
She asks me for land marks, how many hours from the city. I tell her as best I can and then all that's left to do is wait.  
  
I sit in the car next to Mark. Laura is huddled in the back, staring at nothing.  
  
"I hate you," she says in a small voice.  
  
"You promised, Laura." Says Mark, just as quietly. "You swore you wouldn't do it anymore. You promised ."  
  
We don't talk again till the cops come. Then it's a million questions, bright lights, squawking radios, too much too much. Someone calls our parents. A state trooper gives us a ride home.  
  
"We did the right thing, right?" whispers Mark when the pull up in front of his house. "Right?"  
  
"Right," I say. But in all honesty, I don't really know either. 


	11. eleven

Note: First off, I am soooo sorry for the long wait but I was at camp and there are no computers in the boonies of the boonies......well actually there are, but they don't work so well. So anyway, that's my excuse. Also, if this chapter is bad it's because for the past three weeks I have eaten nothing but tofu, kale, sprouts, and bad tea and I am severely jonesing for some chocolate right now and I think that it may be limiting my brain capacity. That's not much of an excuse but it's all I got. So.....enjoy I guess. And thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter.

Eleven: Mark

Freshman year of College 1988-89

Don't ask me how I got into Brown. It's a kind of miracle really, considering my total lack of interest at the beginning of junior year and subsequent bad grades. If my dad had any kind of political leverage—or if we were multi-millionaires—I'd say he bribed the school just to save face around his stupid friends but these things are obviously out of the question. I guess that I'm going to have to settle on the Fluke theory. Either that or they felt bad for me for some reason. Again I am stumped as to why because I am a white Jewish boy from a nice suburban neighborhood and unless you are another white Jewish boy from a nice suburban neighborhood and therefore know what it's like, you don't feel bad for people like me.

So here I am, stranded in Rhode Island at a school that I don't especially want to go to. This sounds ungrateful because it's a good school and my getting in was a kind of phenomenon but that's the way it is. I don't want to be here because it means I have to decide what I want to do in life and all I really want to do right now is fuck around with my Nikon (that is, if SOMEBODY hadn't thrown it against a big fat WALL) or maybe try a filming something. I've never used a video camera except to film my cousin's bar mitzvah but it was fun.

But I digress; going to college means that I have to grow up, get married, have kids, start busting my ass for a nine to five job I hate, get drunk in the evening, scream at my kids, alienate my wife, and basically turn into my father. This is a fate worse than death in my book.

Right now I'm in the dorm, unpacking my shit and chowing down on some animal crackers. It's a small room with just enough room for two single beds and two desks but they've decided it would be a fantastic idea to cram in three beds and three desks. There's a communal bathroom down the hall next to the washing machines. Someone sticky tacked my name and my room mates names to the door. Or, their interpretation of my name. According to my door I am Mike Cohen. Neither of my room mates has showed up yet, but I don't honestly care. One named is Benjamin Coffin III, which brings to mind some Waspy jerk from New England who plays polo and wears pastels. The other is Thomas Collins. I keep picturing a shortish skinny kid with glasses and messy hair who wears stretched out sweaters and has to safety pin the soles of his shoes to the cloth because he's too lazy to get a new pair. And yes, this is pretty much me. The thing is, it's hard enough to stand BEING me. I don't think I could actually deal LIVING in the same dorm as myself.

There's a knock on the door and a voice says "Hey, are you Mike or Benjamin?"

"Mark," I push my glasses up my nose a little wondering which one this is. He's only about an inch or so taller than me, but this is where any other resemblance is thrown out the window. He holds himself like he's about six-four instead of five-seven. His clothes don't look like they came from the donation box in a church basement and one of the ear pieces of his glasses is not made of a piece of coat hanger. His shoes are in good repair and I'm willing to bet there isn't a melted Jolly Rancher fusing his coat pocket shut. His hair does not make him look like he's just been through electroshock therapy because he has twisted it into neat, chin length dread locks. Oh yes, and he's black.

"Pardon?" he says.

"I'm Mark. They got my name wrong," I say.

"I'm Tom, but everyone calls me Collins," he sets down his bag and looks around the room. "Is the other guy here?"

"Nope." As has been proven many, many times before, I am a fascinating and skilled conversationalist.

"Grim name. Coffin. Geeze."

"Yup."

"Sooooooo......" He plays with the light switch and the overhead bulb flickers on and off on and off like a strobe light.

I stare up at the light and he stops flicking the switch.

"Sorry. Bad habit."

"It's fine." We stand and stare at around the room, taking in the beds, the desks, our bags, looking at anything but each other. Just when the silence is getting unbearable someone bursts into the room, trips over Collins' duffle bag and falls flat on his face. He' Immediately he scrambles up, shakes himself like a dog, dusts off his clothes and then grins at both of us like we're the most fabulous people in the entire world.

"Hey guys, I'm Benny!!" He sounds absolutely ecstatic, as if being Benny is the most fun and exciting thing he has ever done.

Collins looks absolutely bewildered. He runs a hand through his hair and smiles like he's trying to be cool but wondering what the fuck this guy is on. As for me, well Benny reminds me quite keenly of Roger when he's found something exciting. There is the same look in his eyes, a kind of excitement that edges on hysteria. He has the same sort of crackling energy too, like there's electricity coming off him.

"I'm Mark," I say for once feeling at ease. People who are this forward always make me more comfortable. You know that you don't have to entertain them because they'll always find something that's worth their attention without your help.

He plonks down on a bed and grins up at us, "So what're your majors?"

"Philosophy," says Collins.

"Cool. I know nothing about philosophy. What do you do?" he sounds genuinely interested, which is surprising. What's your major is a courtesy question. No one really cares what you're doing, they just ask so they can tell you what THEY'RE doing.

"Well you read and discuss things a lot. But I've already got this theory going about how different the world is now because of technology and stuff. I mean, look how far we've come, how much society has changed since our parents were our age, and a lot of it has to do with this new advanced technology. Thing is some of it's good, like understanding current affairs and being able to learn more about other cultures, but some of it's really bad. People are becoming too dependent on gadgets. It's....well I haven't really figured it out yet but it's a good theory, really. What about you, what are you doing?"

"Business. I want to buy buildings in shitty neighborhoods, fix them up and rent them out at low prices to poor people and artists. And they'll be nice apartments too. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you shouldn't have a right to decent housing. I know I won't make much money, but I really don't care. It's not about money, it's about doing a good thing for society." Even though he's smiling he sounds serious. This plan isn't a joke to him. He already knows what he wants and he's probably known for a long time. I wish I were so clear in what I want.

"What're you doing, Mark?" he asks.

It costs me a lot to say "I don't really have a major yet. Still deciding." Next to these two people who already have things figured out I feel like a big dumb ass.

"Well what are you considering?" asks Benny.

"Umm....nothing?" I feel like such an idiot right now. I don't belong here and I know it, but I could at least pretend to be passionate about something.

"Don't you like to do anything?" Benny presses.

"Sure. But I can't really major in it," I my face feels like a hot August day. I kneel and start unpacking books so they won't see the flush.

"You can major in just about anything, except maybe dust bunny farming," says Benny.

"What is it anyway?" asks Collins gently, like I'm a very small child on the verge of tears, which is what basically what I feel like.

I shrug, dump a load of books on the floor. "Photography,"

"See! You can major in that!" crows Benny. "Go sign up right now. Everyone should do something they love."

I sigh and sit back on my heels. "It's not really that simple. My family will probably disown me if I major in that."

Collins frowns and nods.

"Why? What the hell's wrong with them?" demands Benny. He sounds personally outraged.

I shrug again. "It's not really a real job, is it? I'm not going to make much money taking pictures or making films or anything."

"Do it anyway," says Benny promptly. "Who cares about your family? Do what makes you happy."

Collins shakes his head. "You can't just alienate your family like that. Sometimes they're all you have, y'know?" he sounds like he's speaking from experience.

"I wouldn't mind, actually." I surprise myself by saying it so firmly. "I don't really like them all that much."

"There you go!" cries Benny. He jumps up on the bed and thrusts his fist into the air. "Screw the bastards! Rebel! Fuck the system!!"

He looks like some demented version of the statue of liberty. His whole face is glowing like a flashlight and he's humming with excitement. I mean his body is actually vibrating slightly. Collins and I laugh and laugh.

"So are you an anarchist or something?" asks Collins when he's calmed down. "I am."

"I think I might be. I was a communist in high school, but I just couldn't stop seeing the holes in it." He says earnestly. He sits back down so suddenly that the bed shakes.

"Yeah, there's no way in hell communism would ever work," says Collins seriously.

"Yeah, anarchy is definitely the way to go. It's totally foolproof." I say. Collins glances at me, hearing the sarcasm but Benny just keeps on grinning. They're so different from each other. No, scratch that, WE'RE so different from each other. But for some reason I like both of them. Strangely I think that maybe I could get through at least this year with them as my roommates.

Oookay and that's chapter eleven. I'm not sure I like it, and it's kind of a jump and I just realized that I totally neglected to say what happened after they get home from the little Laura adventure but I'll get to it, I promise! Please don't me mad at me!!! and please review and once again, so sorry for the delay!!


	12. twelve

And she updates! I promise Roger will show up in this one because I miss him. Also, a quick apology for shoving Benny and Collins into the story in such a contrived way, (do colleges even put three people in a room??) but I had to get them in there, and much like the guitar and the camera, I had no idea how to do it otherwise.

Twelve: Roger

1988-89

The kid next to me is wearing a t-shirt that says 'In the dark? Follow the son!' in neon orange letters. His hair is plastered in a blond shell over his head and there is a big silver cross tied to a leather thong around his neck. He has a kind of dazed grin and when I look into his eyes I feel more like I'm looking into a horse's eyes, or a cow's. Not that he's stupid (well he might be, but I don't know) it just seems like he's not all there. Like he's passed on to some higher spiritual plane or something.

Everyone on this bus is like that. If I'd known I was going to be taking a Greyhound full of Born Again Christians I'd have booked a different ride. They're all from the same Christian youth group called Teen Spirit! (I find the exclamation point highly annoying). They're all wearing shirts with stupid neo-Christian slogans, polyester jackets, and those jeans with no back pockets and elastic in the waist that would make even the hottest ass look like shit. They're almost all blond.

The only time their smiles wavered was when I got on the bus in my ripped jeans and leather jacket. I guess I looked like the anti-Christ to them or something. None of them offered to help me put my Fender on the over head rack (not that I would have let them touch it) but that's not really the point, is it? I mean, if Jesus had been on this bus he would have helped me.

It's ten at night now. They've been singing these idiotic songs since I got on the bus, and probably since before, too. I'm sure the bus driver is ready to shove pencils into his ears just so he doesn't have to listen to this shit. That's how I feel, anyway.

"We are chiiiiiiiiiillin' in the light of God

we are chillin' in the light of God (light of Gooooood)

we are chillin', chillin' we are chillin', (Oooo! Ooo!)

we are chillin' in the light of God (light of Gooooood)"

And how, pray tell, does one 'chill' in the light of God? Tanning would be more accurate.

"We are praaaaaaising in the house of God

we are praising in the house of God (house of Gooood)

we are praising, praising we are praising (ooo! Ooo!)

we are praising in the house of God (house of Goooood)"

Oh, Lord strike them down! I know you must find this as irritating as I do, and you've had to deal with it for ages longer than I have. Strike them down now, before I do.

See? See what they've brought me to? I've actually prayed. I'm an atheist for crying out loud!

There is reason behind this madness, I promise. For once in my life I have a coherent plan. Okay that's a big lie, I have a sort of kind of half way formed plan. But it is still a plan, so we're half way there, right?

Here's what's going down: I am on a bus full of religious loonies. I am headed for Providence, Rhode Island. More specifically, I am headed for Brown University. Not to enroll, obviously. I am going to find Mark and I am going to rescue him.

I really miss him. I know it sounds corny, but it's true. I mean, we were practically glued together all through high school. We gave the teachers (and three quarters of the student body) hell. Then after graduation, I dunno.....things changed. Mark was shipped off to college to get smart(er) and I packed a suit case and my guitars, tossed them into my shitty old car and drove off to Seattle to see what was what.

Let me tell you something about Seattle; IT SUCKS. To be fair, there must be some people who like it, otherwise no one would live there.....unless of course it's like Salt Lake City and in which case everyone who isn't a Mormon or insane is stuck there for financial reasons. Are there any Mormons in Seattle? I'll have to ask Mark. I didn't see any. Don't they wear weird clothes? Or is that the Mennonites and the Amish? There are Amish people in Pennsylvania, my uncle used to trade with them.

I'm getting off track. We (and by we I mean I) were talking about Seattle. Seattle has a great music scene but it rains so fucking much that the shitty weather kinda cancels out all the musical coolness (at least for me). Unfortunately, by the time I figured out how much I hated Seattle I already had a job (if working at Dunkin' Doughnuts can be called a job when it's really more like sugar coated SLAVE LABOR) a girl named Kitty who I slept with, a dealer named Todd who Kitty also slept with, some friends, a band, and a house/squat/condemned building type thing. It took me about a month to get all this together and I was so busy that I didn't have time to realize that I hadn't picked the greatest place to live.

For a couple of months I just dithered around. I went to work and did my part in raising the cholesterol of cops and construction workers everywhere. I went to parties every night and got totally baked or plastered or both. I tried acid (which I am never doing again) I tried speed (which I will most definitely do again) I tried angel dust, PCP, coke, and heroin. Out of all these, heroin was most definitely the best. I didn't shoot up, the fist time just did a chase but maaaaaan! It was fucking awesome, that's what it was.

Mark would kill me if he knew the kind of drugs I did. After we made friends again in high school I cut down some on the hard stuff but I dunno.....without him looking over my shoulder and clucking I just did what I wanted. And what I wanted was heroin. But I was safe about it, you know? I never used needles or anything. Didn't matter how safe I was to Kitty though, she dumped me (as much as you can dump somebody that you weren't in an exclusive relationship with). That's the real reason I left, actually. Well that and the band breaking up.

Our band was called the Hungarians. I thought it was kind of a stupid name, but it wasn't mine, it was Bob's. Bob was the lead singer/guitarist. He had a bad voice and he was a shitty ass guitarist. They hired me to play second guitar and back up vocals after their first guy got done for possession. Then the penny dropped and they realized I was a better guitarist than Bob (and yes I am bragging. Let me, it's fun) and moved me up to lead guitar. Even so, we weren't a very good band. Our bassist, Jeff, was good, and I was good but our drummer had an inability to keep time and, as I said, there should have been a law against Bob even touching a guitar. Still, they were fun guys and they gave me a place to live so I made the most of it.

The Hungarians broke up because Bob got arrested for breaking and entering and then Jeff moved to New York. He wrote me a few weeks ago to say he'd gotten a job at a theater in East Village where they did the Rocky Horror Picture Show every night. They had him playing Frank-n-Furter. He said that he could get me a job as an understudy for Brad if I wanted to get out of Seattle. He also said we could re-start the band. He wants to call it 'The Hungarians 2". Right Jeff, sure. This is why you were never allowed to write lyrics. At first I didn't know, I mean, I've seen Rocky Horror and I wasn't sure if I could take walking around in my jockies and dressing up in a corset and dancing around. It's just not me, y'know?

The things that changed my mind were three fold; first off, I got my ass fired from Dunkin' Doughnuts for eating the merchandise. Well soooorry Mr. Doughnut Man but you can't surround a hungry nineteen year old with doughnuts and not expect him to eat them. The second reason was, as I said, I hated Seattle with a deep, deep, deep, deep passion. The third came in the form of the following letter from Mark;

Hey Roger,

Last time you wrote you said you hated Seattle. You wanna know something weird? I hate Brown. Yup. It sucks.

Collins just got kicked out for setting fire to the Young Republican Youth Center. I'm dropping out because, as I said before, I hate it here, they spell theater with an 're' and the coffee is always burned. Benny is leaving because Collins and I are leaving and.....well that's it really. He says he wants to 'stick it to the man' (whatever that means).

We're going to New York. You should come. There's a good music scene in New York too. If you want to come, write or something. We're going on the 10th.

mark.

(He never capitalizes his friggin' name! Drives me up the wall!!).

So that's the story. That's why I'm on the Greyhound from Hell. I am going to Rhode Island where I will meet up with Mark and the Arsonist and the Paper Anarchist and

we'll take the Arsonist's car to New York. Then I'll start thinking about the whole Rocky Horror thing.

Ookay. I know this may be confuzzilling and for that I offer my appi-poli-logies (hahahahah I heart A Clockwork Orange......woah, here comes the nerd queen of the universe.....) but anyway that is that. Again, sorry if it's shitty/confusing. I will clear things up in the next chapter which should be posted by Friday. ALSO: THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH FOR THE REVIEWS! They make me sooooooo happy!


	13. thirteen

Nyagh (this is supposed to be a random happy noise) I love diet coke so so so so so so so much.....nothing to say that's actually related to this chapter, but I wanted to put something up here anyway.

Thirteen: Collins

I am sure that one day the members of the Young Republican Youth Center will thank me for burning down their club house. It may take the Dean a little longer to come around, but at least he isn't suing. I mean, he can't really. There's no proof that I did it, just general suspicion, so they can't arrest me or try me. But the Dean decided to expel me anyway. I would have made an issue of that except that he kind of hinted that there WAS a tad of evidence against me, but he'd be willing to over look it if I got the hell out.

So I am getting the hell out.

I'm explaining this to Roger as we drive down the interstate in my arthritic Honda. It's late, probably around two or three in the morning, but none of us have watches so I'm not really sure. It's a warm night and the windows are all down. The breeze smells warm and rubbery, like melting tarmac. Sweet Child o' Mine is playing on the radio and right now everything is good. Roger and I are in the front and he's moving his head from side to side slightly with the music. Mark's conked out in the back seat and Benny's taken advantage of this by sticking tooth picks in his hair. The sad thing is that Mark's hair is so messy that they stay in.

To be honest, Roger really wasn't what I expected. I thought any best friend of Mark's wouldn't be I hate to say it, but it's true. Mark is a nice guy but he isn't cool, just weird.

So I was caught off guard when I finally did meet Roger.

Mark, Benny, and I were sitting under a tree on the edge of campus. Technically I wasn't supposed to be there. I'd signed some contract that said I wasn't to come too close to the university ever again but I had conveniently forgotten about that.

We were eating French fries and dissing the system when this six foot five monster with shaggy hair and stubble plonks down next to Mark and says,

"Are there Mormons in Seattle?"

My first thought was that we were being accosted by a psycho homeless drug addict but then Mark said,

"There are Mormons everywhere, you fuckstick. And hello to you, too."

The psycho grinned and his whole face looked suddenly off kilter. He peeled off this prehistoric leather jacket, tossed it onto Mark's head and leaned back on his elbows.

"I just rode a bus full of brain washed Canadian Christians all the way from Seattle and you call me a fuckstick? Thanks so much, Mark. I feel really loved." He had a great voice. For most of the sentence it had an even, slightly rough cadence but then he would hit a syllable and suddenly it wasn't just a beat in a larger word, it was a smooth delicious dip. I've always been able to tell if people are good singers from the way they talk and this guy was kick ass.

He swept his eyes over us like a king surveying his people. "Are they coming with us?"

Mark nodded. "This is Benny, and this is Collins. Guys, this is Roger, the village idiot."

"Shut up I are smart."

There was more banter, but I tuned it out. I was still trying to decide if I liked Roger or not. The impression that I got was that he was one of those charming, sexy, arrogant guys who everything just comes easily to. Usually I don't like people like that. It seems to me that if everyone else loves them that I have some sort of responsibility not to. I'm just going to have to grin and bear it, I thought.

What I didn't take into account was Roger being a surprisingly comfy person. After three hours he'd won me over.

It turned out that Mark and Roger were a great double act. They played off each other so well that I began to suspect that telepathy was somehow involved. They seemed to have a joint instinct for picking out weakness in their enemies (ie cops, Mark's family, people who spell theater with an 're' and fake punks) and exploiting them mercilessly.

I've never had a best friend, but I have observed best friends interacting and they all seem to have their own language. Mark and Roger had a particularly complex language composed mostly of inside jokes, half finished sentences, and some sort of code consisting of eye contact, quirked eyebrows, and half smirks. I had the feeling that I could know them for eighty years and still not completely understand their language.

Benny told me later that hanging out with them made him feel like Jane Goodall. I knew how he felt. I'd had a big Jane moment just before we left for New York.

Benny had gone inside to get his bags and I was just coming into the parking lot. What I saw I know I was not supposed to see.

They were standing by the Honda, staring down at it like they'd never seen a car before. Mark was hugging himself loosely, Roger had his left hand behind his head. He gnawing on the corner of his lip and smiling ruefully.

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" Mark pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose gently.

Roger snorted, not loudly, just a spurt of air through his nose. "Yeah, man. Awhile."

Mark rubbed the dent above his left eye and shook his head. "I still think about her. I think about her all the time."

"Me too," Roger looked over at Mark and the breeze caught his hair and ruffled it. "I'm sorry. I should have stayed or.....I should have had the cops stay a little longer or something."

"They'd have left eventually," said Mark. "Don't be sorry."

"Maybe he'd have cooled down....."

"Don't be a moron." Mark kicked at a rock and shook his head again, like he had water in his ears

Roger shut his eyes, brought his hand up to his face and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, it's my fault."

"Don't do that, it isn't. It's no one's fault. Life just sucks sometimes is all." He opened the backseat door and dropped in heavily. Roger slid into the front and let his head flop back against the seat.

"Yeah. Life's a bitch." He started to laugh suddenly, his stomach jerked up and down and he rolled on his side, snickering into the seat back.

"Oh God!" Mark whooped. He was laughing too, laughing hard, laughing desperately. "It's not funny!"

"No it isn't!" Roger gasped.

But they just kept laughing and laughing and laughing like the world was ending and it was all they could do anymore.

And now here we are. Now here we are driving into some sort of promise. Something as obscure and meaningful as the blink of an eye, the turn of a mouth, confusing and exciting as laughing into the crack of a fake leather seat. Laughing laughing laughing about something that only you understand. Something that was never funny but you have to do something so you laugh.

Roger twists around in his seat for a second and smirks at Mark with his tooth pick crown. His glasses have slipped off and they're dangling off his left ear. Roger reaches back, snags them, and puts them on.

"Look, I'm Mark," he says, grinning his crooked grin at me. "I'm Mark! I'm Mark! Aspirin anyone?" his head thumps back against the seat like it did earlier today and he giggles. It's then that I notice that his pupils are the size of pinheads.

Mark comes blearily awake. "What did you say?" he slurs.

But Roger is laughing too hard to choke out anything but. "Jack Daniels! What a killer headache, man!"

Mark stares at him for a long moment before he closes his eyes and rests his head against the window.

"Maybe I should drive," I say, glancing again at Roger's nonexistent pupils.

"No, no I'm good. I'm good." Says Roger, taking off the glasses and handing them to me. "I'm fantastic."

I stare at the air between them, hoping to read some sort of message in the charged space but it is empty as a mason jar. There is so much I don't understand between them. There is pain and love and comedy and everything because when you have a best friend like that they aren't so much a friend as a part of you.

Tell me if it's confusing or anything. I'm working up to explaining what happened after Laura slowly, so bear with me. I've noticed that my boys spend lots of time in cars. That wasn't intentional but I guess just try to think of it as symbolism or something. So, I guess review and stuff!! Much love.


	14. fourteen

A problem has been pointed out: you can't be fired from Dunkin' Doughnuts for eating the merchandise. I feel dumb because if I'd thought about it I would have realized that employees get to do stuff like that. Also, there are no quotes in Maureen's first memory sequence but I tried to make the dialogue clear. Tell me if it works, I did it for effect.

Fourteen: Maureen

1989

In my first memory of myself I am five and at the zoo with mom and Laura. We're standing by the zebra pen. Mom is wearing her white linen sundress, the one that made her look almost pretty. She's leaning against the chain link fence around the animals, smoking a menthol, letting the ridges on top of the fence dig into the undersides of her arms. It's much too hot and my red t-shirt is sticking between my shoulder blades. We've been standing by this pen for half an hour now, much too long, but mom won't let us leave.

I keep begging her to take us to see the elephants and the lions. I want to see the seals too, but mom doesn't like water so it's a no go. Laura is sitting with her back to the fence, sucking her thumb. I wish she'd help me but she's three and too young. I pull on the hem of mom's dress. Can I go look alone? I ask. I won't talk to strangers, swear, mom. Please! Mooom! Moooom I'm BORED. She blows the smoke out in a perfect jet and keeps her eyes fixed on the zebras. Don't go far, she says, someone might snatch you. They might think you wouldn't be missed. You don't look like anyone that anyone would care about.

It's 1973 and daddy is in the hospital again.

All my life my family has played a sort of musical chairs between states, hospitals, homes. When daddy was sick we'd live with mom, then daddy would get out and mom would go into the hospital a couple of months later and dad would take care of us. Later, when it got really bad, when they committed dad for life and the state took us away from mom, we lived with Grandma Lily in Vermont.

Even though Laura was two years younger, she figured out that daddy and mom weren't sick in the fever/puking your guts out sense before I did. She was only seven when she caught on, I was nine and still fooling myself but Laura has always been better at seeing the way things are than I am, or maybe she just recognized something in them that I didn't. Either way, she was the one to break the news to me, and it should have been the other way around.

"They're both nuts, you know." She stretched her legs across the ugly green sofa and prodded me with her long toes.

"Who?" I asked. I concentrated hard on not getting the blue nail polish on the skin around my fingers. I knew who she was talking about.

"Mom and Daddy, stupid. They aren't sick, they're crazy. You know that, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah I know." The little brush slipped and electric blue polish smudged across my knuckles.

The year mom got us back, 1980, was the year Laura joined the hospital gown dance. That year she turned ten and I turned twelve. Daddy had been inside for two years. He was at a famous hospital, the same one as Sylvia Plath. Mom told us this like it was supposed to be reassuring but I couldn't help thinking that staying there didn't do Sylvia that much good, seeing as she stuck her head in an oven after she got out.

It was a Wednesday when Laura got sick. I remember because we had play rehearsal on Wednesdays. We were doing The Wizard of Oz that year and I was the scarecrow. I was so excited. I had this idea that if I was in the play, my mother would realize that I was somebody that someone could care about.

Rehearsals were after school. Laura was supposed to come to the auditorium and wait in the back until I was done, then I'd walk her home. But that day she didn't come. I thought maybe she'd stayed after in the art room. She did that sometimes. She loved art. After rehearsal was done I checked the art room, but she wasn't there. That really pissed me off because she was supposed to wait for me. She was too little to walk home alone! I wished I didn't have a little sister sometimes. Life would be so much easier if I didn't have to take care of her all the time!

Later I'd sit in the too bright hospital waiting room, pressing a cold can of Pepsi between my palms, and wonder if my wish to extinguish her hadn't had something to do with what happened. Maybe the universe sent her some message, some signal that it was time to check out and maybe my wish had given it strength.

The doctors would say they couldn't guess how a ten year old had known that lying in the bathtub would make her bleed out faster. They'd also say how thankful they were that she didn't know to slit her wrists vertically, along the vein. She'd cut them horizontally with a blade from my mother's Lady Shaver and that was all that had saved her. That and my over full bladder, my screams, my 9 1 1 call. All through it my mother sat on the living room sofa, fiddling with the blue afghan and smoking one of her fucking menthols.

Laura was in the hospital for three days, then in the kid's psyche section for two weeks. When she got out I bought her a 100 pack of fake gold bangles from Dollar Tree and the state took us away from mom again, this time for good.

I'm wearing one of the bangles now. Laura gave it to me with a bag of candy for my thirteenth birthday. I wear it not so much for luck as for remembrance.

"This is the place," says Henry. I don't much like Henry. He's dumb as mud, but he's in Rocky Horror and he's promised to get me a job as the understudy for Columbia so I've got to play nice with him until the deal is done. He kind of looks like a Ken doll and this disturbs me.

"Wow," I say, squeezing his hand. "Seedy." I've been here before, of course. God, who hasn't seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Henry nods. "Yup."

See? He says the most fascinating things.

We stand still for a couple of minutes, admiring the sheer grodiness of the building I guess. I'm starting to think maybe Henry's forgotten why we are here so I grab his hand and pull him into the building, giggling and shrieking "Oh I can't wait! I've only ever seen it on video! Oh this is going to be so exciting!!!" lies lies all lies.

Henry beams. "Yeah."

I spin around and plant a big wet one smack on his lips and squish my boobs against his chest. "Let's go backstage. I want to meet everyone."

Henry stares at me for a long moment. Maybe it I talked too fast or used a word with too many syllables?

"C'mon!" I break away and tug his arm again and jump around a lot. That seems to get him motivated.

"Okay."

Backstage turns out to be a teeny little place behind the projector screen, maybe about twelve feet square. The whole cast is squashed back there in their fishnet, sequined, corseted glory. Henry leaves to change into his sparkly gold Speedo and I mingle with the cast.

I'm talking to this girl named Carol who plays Magenta when I notice Brad (or rather the actor who plays him) staring at me like he's never seen a girl before in his life. I love it when this happens. Since I was about thirteen I've noticed people staring at me. At first I thought it was because I was uncommonly ugly (because don't all middle schoolers think that?). Then one day I looked in the mirror and thought, huh......I guess there's something there after all.

Even in the stupid sweater vest, this guy is pretty damn foxy. I'm about to go over and hit on him when a girl with bubble gum pink hair and a safety pin through her lip appears out of nowhere and twists herself around him like a boa constrictor.

"Hey Roger," she purrs. She isn't pretty—she's a little stocky and her nose is turned up in a way that probably hasn't been cute since she was five—but there's something mesmerizing about her all the same. She's got IT, whatever that is. She doesn't need to be pretty.

"Hey babe," he murmurs, grabbing her ass. She jams her tongue down his throat and soon their engaged in a snogging session to end all snogging sessions. It looks like they're capable of dropping their pants and doing it right here and now (and wouldn't that be an interesting sight?) when a blond guy with glasses comes backstage and pulls the pink haired girl off Roger.

"C'mon April, time to go sit down. Roger has to work now."

April jams her lower lip out and gazes at the guy (who is getting cuter the more I look at him) through her eyelashes, "But Marky! I don't wanna goooo!"

"Too bad. Do you want to have to spend the whole show backstage again?" he asks.

"No! but....God Marky don't be such an old Jewish woman!"

"But I AM an old Jewish woman!" he protests, widening his eyes. Roger laughs. "I'll give you a Snickers if you come," says Marky, pulling a slightly squashed candy bar out of his back pocket.

"OOOO! Candy! Let's go!" April grabs Marky's arm and hauls him off stage. Roger rolls his eyes and straightens the God-awful vest.

"Maureen!" it's Henry. Oh, God of Rocky Horror kill me now.

"Hi Henry! Well I guess the show's starting soon so I'd better sit down see ya and don't forget to introduce me to that head in charge person guy thing! Well, bye love you see you later!!!" and I'm up and running. I swear if someone had been timing that I'd have broken a world record for fastest sprint (which is quite a feat in leather boots with four inch heels).

I slide into a seat three rows behind April and Marky. She's resting her head on his shoulder like they're at Casablanca or something.

The theater darkens and the camera slowly zooms in on the giant read lips.

"A LONG LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY

GOD CREATED LIPS!!!!!" chants the audience. And so it begins.

By the time the movie ends I've time warped myself into a state of frenzied happiness. The cast pours out from back stage. I watch April fasten herself onto Roger like a large pink and black barnacle.

I start winding my way through the crowd, trying to find Henry. You'd think it would be easier to spot a hot blond in a black corset but it is not to be.

I'm simultaneously walking and trying to see above the crowd when I crash head (well chest) long into some guy and we both fall on our asses.

I recover before he does so I have time to collect myself and to recognize him. It's Marky, looking if I may add, adorably bewildered. I wonder what he'd look like without his glasses. And the moth eaten black t-shirt. And the jeans......stop it! I'm not a slut, I swear. I just keep my options open. Everyone is my type.

When he finally recovers himself he looks at me the same way his friend did, like he's never seen one of my sex before. Must be looking extra good tonight.

"See something you like?" I ask. I borrow April's lower lip pout.

"No. I mean yes. Sorry. It's just......you look like someone I used to know. Not that you aren't pretty but.....yeah."

Awwwww he's cuuuuute!!!!

He starts to walk away and I skip in front of him. "Well? Aren't you going to say who I look like?"

He shrugs, looks uncomfortable. "Just an old girlfriend from high school."

"Oh, really?" I twist a strand of hair around my finger. He swallows and I know I'm getting to him. "What was her name?"

His face twitches and then goes completely blank. "Laura. Laura Johnson."

And the world stops.

"What did you say?" I grab his shoulders. I know it's dramatic but I can't help it.

"Laura Johnson," he repeats.

"That's my sister. That's my little sister. How do you know her?" I shake him a little. "How? You didn't go to our high school I'd remember you I'd......oh." You ever have a tone-of-bricks moment? One of those times when realization hits you over the head with a sledge hammer. "Oh, I see."

He shrugs free and spreads his arms, shrugs a little. I reach backwards, trying to find something to lean against. It's been so long since I've thought about her. I didn't want to think about her or my mother or anyone and now here's a little piece of crazy staring me in the face.

"Want to go outside?" he asks, grabbing my arm before I fall. I nod and we walk slowly out together, winding through the crowd.

Outside we stand under the canopy in front of the building and watch the rain fall. Mark smokes a cigarette (not a menthol, thank God, that would be too much).

"So," he says.

"So," I say.

So we stand and watch the rain.

Laugher bursts through the door and Roger and April stager out, clinging to each other and laughing like there's no tomorrow.

"Hey Mark!" calls Roger. "We're going to the Life!"

"Come with us, Marky-Warky!" giggles April.

"Who's your friend?" asks Roger but he and April have already tottered halfway down the street before I can gather myself enough to answer.

"Wanna come along?" asks Mark.

I clear my throat. "Sure."

We step out into the rain together and I grab his hand without thinking.

Awwwww! Ain't it cute? So that's the update. I may not update for at least a week, just to warn y'all because I'll be out of town.


	15. fifteen

A/N sorry I didn't update sooner. I have no excuse except writers block. Please keep reading! Please!!

Chapter fifteen: Mark

1993

The average human spends five percent of their waking life with their eyes closed. Think about that for a second; we don't see five percent of our lives. It doesn't really seem like a lot, especially if you look at it on a pie chart or something, but if you think about it, I mean really think about it, it's really quite a lot. You always think of yourself as being completely aware of the thing that happen to you. Like, who'd know better than you what's been going on in your life, right?

Sure.

It's one in the morning and I'm watching Maureen's rings glitter in the dim light. They're cheep rings, the kind you get at the dollar store. You can see the seam where they were poured into the mould and the silver coating is chipping off. The plastic stones fell off one of them yesterday. From the fit she pitched you'd have thought it was a fucking family heirloom. Those stupid rings....they're like her bangles. Cheep and flimsy and plastic under the paint but she never takes the fucking things off. Not even in the shower. It freaks April out. She insists it's not hygienic. That always makes Mo laugh because....well because because.

"There's nothing on TV," flops onto the floor in front of the "TV" dejectedly. By TV, I mean of course this large box covered in fake wood paneling circa 1975. I found it in a junk yard and fixed it. Fixed it in the sense that now it at least turns on.

"It's Friday night, of course there isn't anything on. Everyone else is out doing something." I say. I toss one of Collins' old socks at a passing roach. It swerves and scurries into a hole in the wall.

"That's disgusting. Don't play with the roaches, Marky."

"Well there's nothing else to do."

"We could go out...." She suggests half heartedly. I glare at her.

"Could we?" I say testily.

She mumbles something about how if I weren't such an old Jewish woman we could which only pisses me off more.

"Since when are you April?" I snap.

"Fuck you, Mark."

"Fuck you, Maureen. If you want to go out so badly, then go! I'll wait up." I add.

"Don't try to play the martyr, you little fuck. Don't try to make me feel bad for wanting to have fun!" she pulls her hair and swoons onto the sofa beside me. I feel like I should tell her that this is not Gone with the Wind.

We stare at the Christmas lights glowing around the ceiling. After a while Maureen reaches over and switches on the radio. "Sweetest Perfection" plays softly.

"I'm sorry," she says softly.

"So am I," I say. "I'm sorry we didn't go out. I just...."

"I know," she says. "I don't understand but I know you feel like you need to wait up for them. For him. I mean, I know why you're worried."

I shake my head. "I want to think it's April's fault, only I know it's not. I know he started it."

Maureen smiles at me in the soft light. I wish I had my Nikon but it's in the back room. She leans her head on my shoulder and we stare at nothing.

An hour later she's dozed off on my shoulder, but I'm still wide awake. It seems like I spend so many nights wide awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling and waiting.

I feel like I've been living with my eyes closed for the past four years. Ever since I met Maureen and fell into this fucked up relationship—because that's what happened, we just sort of ended up together, like we were obligated to because of Laura—I've been focusing on stupid things. I'd been ignoring all the important things. Ignoring the way April's eyes dulled, the way she slept so much more, the way she suddenly spent hours curled on the sofa like a cat, the way she let her hair fade and didn't care. Somehow I didn't notice that all that amazing energy, that spark of interest, the thing that made him focus so clearly on one thing gradually faded out of Roger. That is to say, he was focused on something, but not on music or April. I missed the bruises in the crooks of Roger's elbows, on the backs of April's beautiful legs. Don't ask how. I made myself stop seeing. He was always the strong one. He always took care of me. He always knew when to stop.

I focused all my energy on Maureen. On her stupid dramatics. I don't think I ever loved her, not really. For all that Maureen is like Laura, only airbrushed, she's not who I want. And I'm not who she wants. She's made—continues to make—that abundantly clear. Half the time I'm here she isn't. She comes back with hickies that have suddenly materialized on her neck. Hmm, I wonder what that could mean? And don't ask why we're together. Desperation. Fascination. Spite. Anger. Because when we get along we do have fun, maybe. Because somehow, through all the shit, we began to care about each other. Strangely, inexplicably, we each care enough about the other not to leave. Or maybe I'm just fooling myself. Maybe we're both just too afraid to be alone.

It was Collins that jerked me out of my stupid, self centered fug. He'd been running kind of wild since we came to New York, we all had. But Collins was really going for it full tilt. We used to joke about it, Tom Collins the Man Whore. Only it caught up to him. It's hard to hear the word AIDS in connection with one of your best friends. Hard to suddenly be jolted into the realization that someone is mortal. Driving Collins to the hospital to get tested....it was like driving home from New York with Laura and Roger all those years ago. Driving home and not really knowing what was coming, only that it felt bad and wrong. And then you get there and your dad gets so pissed off that he hits you, nocks you off your feet and the table corner whacks you in the head. That's what it was like hearing the news. Like you've been fooling yourself that the worst is over and then suddenly WHAM! And you realized it's just started.

Collins is gone now. He's got a scholarship to MIT. I don't know.....I really don't know what'll happen. All I know is he woke me up. After that I started seeing more and more things that weren't right. And I started staying up and waiting for Roger and April to come home, just to check that they made it, just to see if they were okay. I never said anything. Never in the year that I've let myself understand what's going on, have I said a word about it to them. What kind of a friend does that make me?

I don't know. I feel like I don't know anything anymore.

OK guys! I'm so so so so soooo sorry this is late and I'm even sorrier that it's so BAD! Please review anyway, I really need a boost. And please don't be pissed.


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